Sexual Health – Preparation for Appointment

Transcript

When you present to your provider and you have an initial discussion and dialogue about your sexual health concerns, it can be expected that your healthcare provider will ask you some questions and will document your answers and may order some lab investigations. It’s not required to have lab investigations, but some things that your doctor or your provider may want to know will be some of your routine blood work. For example, your well-woman blood work, your blood count, and some of your basic hormone levels and your thyroid level. Although those lab tests are not required, they may be ordered just to make sure that everything is okay. And to rule out any big concerns. It’s not required for you to have a pelvic exam for a sexual health inquiry, but if you are having any pain, then a pelvic exam would be a very good investigation to have done, to rule out any other concerns or to determine if you have some of the more common causes of sexual pain, like irritation of the vulva or vaginal atrophy, which is a thinning of the tissues related to a lack of estrogen, or to rule out a sexually transmitted infection, which could cause sexual pain or to rule out other forms of infection, like a yeast infection or a bacterial infection, which could also cause pain.

And also to make sure that you don’t have prolapse where the uterus or the vaginal tissues are starting to fall down through the vagina and to make sure that your bladder, your vulva, your, your vagina, your uterus, your cervix, your entire genital urinary system is healthy. So although it’s not required to have a pelvic exam, there’s a lot of information that can be attained by having a thorough pelvic exam by a provider who has expertise in gynecology and or sexual health.