Women's sexuality and cancer: an exploratory study

The cancerous disease and its treatments are able to perturb in a important way the sexual life of the patients and their quality of life. We realized a research which aimed, on one hand, at estimating the acceptance of a questionnaire about sexuality on female patients and, on the other hand, at studying the potential links between sexual function, quality of life, body image, psychic suffering and relation with the partner. On 106 sought female patients, 69 (65.1%) agreed at first instance to participate in the study. However, only 33 (31.1% of the global sample) answered effectively the questionnaire. The non-participants distinguish themselves mainly by their higher age, the fact that they are more frequently menopausal and inactivate on a professional level. The reasons most frequently evoked to refuse to fill the questionnaire differ as the patients refuse it spontaneously (absence of sexual partner) or after reading (too intimate). A matrix of correlation puts in evidence the links between dimensions of the sexuality, age, body image, relation maintained with the sexual partner and the quality of life. The results bring to light the interest to question the link between sexuality and biopsychosocial experience of the disease. However, the questioning of "the intimate" within the cancer care seems to collide with the limits that the patients can pose. To cite this journal: Psycho-Oncol. 5 (2011).