Sexual functioning among breast cancer, gynecologic cancer, and healthy women.

Abstract

An investigation was conducted to determine the specific type of sexual functioning deficits and the relationship between global sexual satisfaction and adjustment in two related life areas, the marital relationship and a woman's body image, for two groups of cancer patients at high risk for sexual difficulties. Analyses revealed that the aspects of sexual functioning for matched samples of breast cancer patients and gynecologic ancer patients that differed from those of healthy women were the frequency of sexual behaviors and the level of sexual arousal. Whereas women's evaluations of their current sexual ife had no relationship to their marital adjustment ratings, analyses uggested that body image disruption may be a prevalent problem for gynecologic cancer patients. Although the majority of the 900,000 women diagnosed annually with breast cancer or genital cancer are treated effectively, sexual functioning morbidity frequently occurs. In fact, review of sexual functioning morbidity estimates for major organ sites (i.e., breast, genital, colon, rectum, and bladder) shows that close to 90 % of the patients surveyed experience sexual functioning morbidity, with the highest rates for those with disease at a sexual body site (Andersen, in press). The present study provides descriptive data useful in preventing or treating sexual functioning morbidity among women with cancer. Two groups at especially high risk for sexual difficulties are women with breast can-cer or gynecologic ancer. In combination, these sites account for 44 % of all female cancer patients diagnosed annually (Silver-The research was supported by Biomedical Research Grant NIH-S07-RR07035-16 awarded to the first author. The authors would like to thank individuals who provided assistance in this research. Greatest appreciation is extended tothe participating patients. In addition, we thank the following professionals for their assistance: physicians Barrie Anderson and Charles deProsse, research