It is World AIDS Day and everywhere you look there’s an article touching upon some aspect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This summer, I wrote a post on HIV in the older age groups prompted by a study that showed that older men taking erectile dysfunction drugs (eg. Viagra) had twice the rate of sexually transmitted illnesses than their non-medicated peers.
Today, I came across a US News and World Report article that pretty much spells it out like I did in my blog earlier this year.
- older people don’t think they are at risk for HIV infection
- physicians don’t think that older people are at risk for HIV infection and therefore don’t screen them
- post-menopausal women have little incentive to use barrier precaution such as a condom
- Viagra is really changing the landscape of who’s at risk for sexually transmitted illnesses
- Mixing the treatment of chronic illnesses of old age (eg. stroke) with that of HIV/AIDS is not an easy feat
A lot of “young people” don’t think of “old people” as having sex. Unfortunately, that applies to physicians as well. As an infectious disease physician, a patient’s age does not prevent me from obtaining a sexual history. But I have to be ready for backlash. The last elderly woman I requested a sexual history from first had me repeat my question. She was startled as shown by her facial expression and gasp. But I don’t think I was out of line. She was 90, widowed 2 years earlier, recently moved to a nursing home and was now experiencing multiple urine infections when before she was “totally healthy”. How could I not ask?
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