The impact of sexual dysfunction on the quality of life of women: an observational study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Sexual health involves several components in relation to sexuality, such as biological, cultural, psychological and social. When some of these factors are reached, a picture of sexual dysfunction may result. OBJECTIVE: To investigate quality of life in women with sexual dysfunction. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional, observational, observational study of 18- to 59-year-old women from the EBMSP CAAP. Excluded: women with a history of severe psychiatric illness, carriers of neurological chronic degenerative diseases, with dyspareunia of organic causes, in physiotherapeutic treatment and pregnant women. FSFI ? 26 was used for the group with dysfunction and <26 for the comparison group. Assessment instruments applied: FSFI and 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36). The comparison of the medians of the SF-36 and FSFI domains between the groups was performed by the Mann-Whitney test (non-parametric test), and the categorical variables with the sexual dysfunction were done using the chi-square test. RESULTS: Sample 36 patient, 18 in each group. The sociodemographic and clinical variables that presented statistical difference were income (0.001) and schooling (0.011). In the FSFI, all domains presented significance (0.00). In the SF-36, when comparing the two groups, 06 domains presented statistical significance. CONCLUSION: The results show that women with sexual dysfunction have a negative impact on some aspects of quality of life. It is important to emphasize that schooling and family income were not homogeneous between the groups, so, due to the characteristics of the study, it is not possible to measure cause and consequence relationship in sexual dysfunction with quality of life of the participants.