Impact of Anticancer Treatment on Sexual Function and Intimacy
Don Dizon, MD, Brown University Health, Providence, Rhode Island, identifies common sexual side effects from anticancer treatments and discusses the effect those side effects can have on intimacy among patients undergoing cancer treatment.
Transcript:
I am Don Dizon, I'm a professor of medicine and surgery at Brown University, and I practice breast cancer, genitourinary cancers, and survivorship and I run a sexual health clinic. I'm here to talk about sexual health for women who have been diagnosed with cancer.
I think the most important point is just don't forget to ask about it because it's not something that we just want to learn about– there's actually things we can do. There's evidence behind interventions and all of it is really aimed at people discovering, reclaiming, and enjoying a sexual life because that's inherently a very human characteristic, and if we're looking for our patients to live longer, we also have to strive for them to live better.
Sexual health can impact every aspect of a woman's sexual life from the way they experience intimacy to sensuality to arousal, even to desire, and all of this can have an impact on their partner, whether that partner is male or female, One of the most critical things I do see as well is women who experience pain, say with penetrative activities– that is the one situation where one needs to get a pelvic exam because the treatments are very different as to what is causing that pain. If it's localized just to the entrance of the vagina, for example, that is easily treated but if someone who has pain with say thrust, that is not as easily treated, and this again goes back to the fact that there's evidence-based treatments that we can rely on to help people recover.
Source:
Dizon D. Sexual side effects of treatment. Presented at Great Debates in Solid Tumors. March 22-23, 2025; New York, NY.
