SafetyIssues Personal and Public Safety News Articles: Sex is Safe for Most Heart Patients: AHA

Sex is Safe for Most Heart Patients: AHA
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Courtesy of WSJ on 01/20/12 11:36:00
 
Heart patients may be nervous or anxious about having sex, but most of them can
do so safely — and they shouldn’t be afraid to bring up the topic with their
doctor.
So says the American Heart Association in its first scientific statement on
sexual activity and cardiovascular disease, published online by Circulation.
“It’s reasonably safe for most people with stable disease to engage in
sexual activity,” says Glenn Levine, a professor of medicine at Baylor College
of Medicine and lead author of the statement.
The risk of suffering a heart event during sex is “minuscule” because sex
usually simply doesn’t last very long, according to the statement. (Certainly
it typically doesn’t last as long as a marathon, where the risk of cardiac
arrest was recently pegged as very small.)
Sex is the cause of less than 1% of all acute heart attacks, the review said.
And autopsy studies suggest that only between 0.6% and 1.7% of sudden deaths are
related to sexual activity. More...