Impact of sildenafil on marital and sexual adjustment in patients and their wives after radiotherapy and short-term androgen suppression for prostate cancer
Supportive Care in Cancer, 03/02/2012  Clinical Article

Hanisch LJ et al. – This paper reports on a secondary aim to investigate the effect of sildenafil on overall sexual and marital adjustment among both patients and their wives. Larger studies are warranted to further examine possible differences in sexual experiences and treatment needs between prostate cancer patients and their wives, as well as to assess predictors of sildenafil response.

• RTOG 0215 was a placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover trial of sildenafil
• Participation of wives was optional
• 24 married heterosexual couples (33% of heterosexual couples in study) completed the Sexual Adjustment Questionnaire and Locke’s Marital Adjustment Test
• Treatment differences in mean change scores were evaluated by paired t-tests, and proportion of patients achieving clinically meaningful change was evaluated using chi-square tests
• Spearman’s correlation coefficients were used to determine association of adjustment between patients and wives

• No significant change in either sexual or marital adjustment for patients
• For wives, there was a trend for improvement in sexual adjustment but no significant change in marital adjustment
• Change in marital adjustment between patients and wives was weakly related (r s equals 0.15, p equals 0.48), and for sexual adjustment, there was moderate, but nonsignificant relationship (r s equals 0.40, p equals 0.09)