Sexual Medicine Overview
According to the European Society of Sexual Medicine, sexual medicine is the branch of medicine concerned with human sexuality and its disorders. Sexual medicine attempts to improve sexual health through the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of conditions or diseases that involve sexual function, sexual and/or partnership experience and behavior, gender identity, and sexual trauma and its consequences. Sexual medicine takes into account the individual and couple dimension, as well as the knowledge and methods of medical, psychological, and social sciences. It recognizes that many of the conditions or disorders may be caused by other medical conditions and/or their treatment.
Based on recent studies, it is estimated that, in the United States, more than 10% to 20% of women have problems with sexual desire, arousal, orgasm, and/or pain associated with personal distress or bother. Furthermore, sexual health problems are shared between the genders. A woman whose male partner has an erection problem is very likely to have related reductions in her sexual function and sexual satisfaction. Sexual solutions are also shared. A woman whose partner receives safe and effective treatment for his sexual problem will very likely experience improvement in her sexual function and sexual satisfaction.
Currently, there are a lack of specialists treating sexual health issues, be they biologic, psychologic and/or relationship based. Why is this so? The answer is complicated and multi-factorial. Sadly, sexual medicine is not currently a part of the curriculum in most medical schools. Sexual medicine treatment facilities in medical centers are extremely rare. A recurrent and regrettable cycle exists. Practicing healthcare providers received limited information in sexual medicine during their training, leaving them either uncomfortable with the subject or unaware of management options for sexual health problems.
The fact is, though, many individuals and couples, including some healthcare providers themselves, need sexual medicine health care. With the advent of a pill for men, sexual medicine entered the consciousness and conversations of the citizens of the world. Sildenafil was FDA approved as a safe and effective treatment for men with erectile dysfunction in 1998. Since then, it has become “acceptable” for a man to have a sexual health problem, for the sexual health problem to be associated with distress, and for the sexual health problem to be safely and effectively managed by a healthcare provider. The growth of healthcare professionals examining issues in sexual medicine for women is directly related to the release of government-approved, safe and effective treatments for sexual health concerns of men. As more men became aware of help, more women sought help for their unaddressed sexual health concerns.
Efforts should be made by the healthcare professional to resolve the sexual problem with use of the least invasive and most reversible treatment options. If the problem persists, then a step care approach should be utilized engaging therapies that provide benefits, although there are associated risks. As in other aspects of medicine, the sexual medicine healthcare professional and the patient increasingly rely on management principles based on data from well-described, randomized clinical trials, cohort and case-control studies, and meta analyses and/or other systematic review, published in peer review journals that employ principles of evidence-based medicine. The idea is that management principles are not based on personal anecdotal experience.
Sexual medicine issues are complex. In order to resolve the individual’s sexual health problems, mind, body, and relationship issues must be considered. Your sexual medicine physician is dedicated to identifying all the interdependent factors involved and to solving the unique situation, as rapidly as possible, using evidence-based safe and effective management strategies, starting at the most reversible and least invasive. Through basic science and clinical research, both biological and psychological, this field will continue to progress. Consequently, healthcare providers will have an opportunity, in the future, to understand more about sexual function and dysfunction and therefore more about therapies to help you.
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