Patient reported disease-specific concerns relating to sexuality in multiple myeloma
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Purpose There is increasing recognition that cancer and its treatment can have lasting effects on sexuality. However, most studies focus on breast and reproductive cancers while hematological cancers remain understudied. Only one prior study has acknowledged the existence of sexuality concerns among multiple myeloma (MM) survivors but did not expand upon them. This study explored how diagnosis and treatment of MM may affect sexual expression and also examined patient-provider communication about sexuality. Methods Men and women with MM ( N =65) were recruited internationally for an online survey. The survey included open-ended questions about MM-specific barriers to engaging in sexual activity, methods used to adapt to sexual changes, and communication with healthcare providers. Answers to open-ended questions were summarized using a qualitative descriptive approach. Results Participants identified several barriers to sexual activity that may be unique to MM, such as concerns about bone health, infections, and vaginal bleeding and bruising. They also described adapting to sexual challenges by trying sexual medicines/aids, changing their sexual expression, and managing treatment risks. Half of the participants reported speaking to providers about sexuality, with a minority receiving sexual health-related recommendations. Conclusions Participants often faced sexual challenges after diagnosis, many of which may be unique to MM. While some were able to adapt to these changes, sexuality concerns were under-discussed and under-treated by healthcare providers. Proposed suggestions for improving patient-provider communication about sexuality and clinical care are offered based on the gaps identified by participants.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".