PSYCHOLOGICAL AND MEDICAL ASPECTS OF SEXUALITY FOLLOWING STROKE

The study was aimed at investigation of the sexual life after stroke, One-hundred-thirty-nine consecutive stroke patients admitted to our re habilitation units were interviewed They suffered from stroke one mont h before. Among these, 86 subjects could be enrolled for the study. Af ter one year 57 men (79.2%) and 15 women (20.8%) could be interviewed again about their sexual life. Their mean age was 63.7 years (s.d 8.4) . At this time Beck scale for depression to non-aphasic patients and F unctional Independence Measure (FIM) scale were also applied. We confi rmed the sexual decline in the aftermath of the stroke. At individual level, the mean decline was about 34% in the frequency of performance, bur the percentage of patients experiencing a decline was quite high (83.3%). Neither gender nor injured hemisphere accounted for the sexua l decline. Lack of correlation was also found with age, education, dis ability and depression. Our data agree with the opinion that psycholog ical issues, rather than medical ones, account for disruption of sexua l functioning in stroke survivors.