The sex doctors will see you now

Brian Alexander • E-mail

Next week in San Diego, Dr. Irwin Goldstein will open the doors of the nation’s first holistic, hospital-based sexual medicine center. San Diego Sexual Medicine will draw upon multidisciplinary fields to diagnose and treat the sexual complaints of patients, says Goldstein.

This could be a revolution in the treatment of sexual complaints. Or, others argue, it could be another step toward inventing disease to serve a pharmaceutical industry bent on creating expensive drugs to fix what isn’t really broken.

The need for some way for the medical community to better address sexual concerns was made clear during a presentation by Dr. Sandra Carson, an ob-gyn at Brown University and the editor of the journal Sexuality, Reproduction and Menopause. Carson practically begged the assembled doctors, mostly ob-gyns, to pay some attention to their patients’ sex lives.

Yes, doctors don’t have time to engage in lengthy discussions and to take sexual histories. Yes, doctors don’t like even broaching the topic, and neither do patients. But please, she said, try.

Talking freely about sex is a problem for many, she says. “This can be for lots of reasons. Patients can have issues about their own sexuality and sometimes doctors are reticent to impose on that reticence.”

Dr. John P. Mulhall, the director of the sexual medicine program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City suggests another reason why doctors are reluctant.

“The average student gets about two hours of sexual medicine in med school,” he says. The fact is, many doctors feel unqualified to talk sex.

So where do you go if you don’t feel like having sex anymore, but wish you did? Or if you like sex but can’t seem to have a orgasm?

Traditionally, primary care physicians would refer a patient to a urologist or ob-gyn, but this may not address the complexities of sexual experience which could require intervention from psychology, endocrinology, neurology or other disciplines.

'A couples' issue'
For Goldstein, addressing sexuality with just such a multidisciplinary approach has been a longtime dream.

Goldstein set up a sexual medicine center at Boston University to conduct basic research, treat patients and mentor new doctors (Mulhall among them). He also authored and co-authored a raft of scientific papers, including the 1998 New England Journal of Medicine report on a new drug called Viagra. The center received hundreds of calls, mostly from women, asking if they should take the drug.

“So we did the most logical thing. We were a clinic studying male sexual health and diagnosing men, so we sent (women) to their gynecologists and every one of them came back saying, ‘The gynecologist suggests we come back to your clinic.’ So we said, this is a couples’ issue. How can you only treat one gender? It makes no sense.”

That was when he realized there was a need for an integrated sexual medicine program center to treat both men and women.

Goldstein began implementing his vision of a multidisciplinary approach for both men and women but says he was hung up by internal politics.

Goldstein retired from Boston University and left the sexual medicine center in 2005 and has spent the last two years traveling the country trying to convince a university to make his dream come true. Finally, San Diego’s Alvarado Hospital and the University of California, San Diego, combined to set up San Diego Sexual Medicine in Alvarado facilities and give Goldstein an appointment as a clinical professor of surgery at UCSD. The doctors at Alvarado will have specialized sexual medicine training in addition to their own areas of expertise.

MORE FROM SEXPLORATION

Sexploration Section Front

Sexploration: Pregnant sex brings thrills, fears Is this even legal ? Pro bono sex advice Science proves that bikinis turn men into boobs Cheating (emotionally) on your spouse What's 'normal' sex? Shrinks seek definition Sex is just one more chore on her to-do list In the game of love, sex rules may apply Stop loving me so much When the only connections in bed are wireless Affairs with avatars Sexploration Section Front   Add Sexploration headlines to your news reader: