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Health News
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Sex after heart attack absolutely safe
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Posted online: Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 10:02:10 PM
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Washington, May 10 : Getting medical counsel prior to hospital discharge could help heart attack patients return to a healthy sex life, a new study has revealed.
Current guidelines developed by groups of leading cardiologists state that stable heart patients without complications can resume sexual activity with their usual partner within one week to 10 days.
In January, the American Heart Association (AHA) put more weight behind those recommendations with its most comprehensive review to date of research on sexual activity among heart patients.
It said that if patients can engage in moderate exercise - such as walking up a couple of flights of stairs - they are generally healthy enough for sex.
The AHA also points to respected guidelines for care after heart attack or acute myocardial infarction (AMI), which include patient counselling on resuming sexual activity.
Now, a new study has found that patients who were sexually active before suffering a heart attack were one and a half times more likely to recapture their sex lives if they received guidance on the topic before leaving the hospital.
While it's no surprise that sexual activity tends to decline slightly for both men and women during the year following a heart attack, or acute myocardial infarction (AMI), researchers found that many patients who said they did not get medical counsel prior to hospital discharge either unnecessarily delayed or refrained from sex.
In a survey of 1,879 heart attack patients, less than a half of men and roughly a third of women recall receiving instructions about when to safely return to sexual activity before leaving the hospital. After a year of follow-up, only 41 percent of men and 24 percent of women reported having a discussion with their doctor about sex since their heart attack.
Results from the study are in line with early findings presented at an American Heart Association conference in 2010.
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