Sexual dysfunction in pregnant women in a community

Abstract

Introduction: During pregnancy, women are more prone to the emergence of sexual dysfunctions, due to the weakening of the pelvic floor (PF) and hormonal factors that, combined, can result in changes in sexual function. Objective: To investigate the presence of sexual dysfunction in pregnant women in the community. Methods: This is an observational, quantitative, cross-sectional study. Pregnant women aged between 18 and 40 years were included, and those who refused to answer the questionnaire completely were excluded.  The evaluation was carried out at the Rosa de Fátima Basic Health Unit, through a semi-structured questionnaire, containing: sociodemographic, clinical and functional data and the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) Questionnaire. The following tests were used to perform the statistical analysis: Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to verify the normality of the data. For the quantitative outcomes, the following tests were used: T-test or Mann Whitney test. Data were presented as frequencies (relative and absolute), mean and standard deviation. The significance level adopted was 5% (p<0,05) for all statistical tests. Results: The sample of this study consisted of 70 (N=70) pregnant women from the Rosa De Fátima UBS community, who had a mean age of 26.3 ± 6.1 years and 2.0 ± 1.2 pregnancies. The FSFI showed a mean of 20.2 ± 7.0 points, indicating sexual dysfunction among the pregnant women investigated. There was a significant relationship between the qualitative variable FSFI and the other qualitative variables of the study: Age (p= 0.022), laceration (p=0.050) and the number of pregnancies (p=0.03). Conclusion: There is the presence of sexual dysfunction in pregnant women in the community when they are of a more advanced age, when they have a greater number of pregnancies and lacerations from previous pregnancies.