[Sexuality and cardiac arrhythmias]

For most patients, sexual activity represents a low risk of triggering cardiac arrhythmias. However, particularly in patients with an underlying heart disease, sexual activity may cause cardiac arrhythmias which may be sometimes serious. From a physiological point of view, sexual activity produces increased sympathetic activity and thereby probably reduced vagal tone which at different degrees may induce cardiac arrythmias. Several presently available autopsy-studies have shown that this happens very rarely and that it mostly affects men. Finally, recently published recommendations allow us to better advise patients with cardiac arrhytmias to engage in sexual activity or to defer it until the condition is stabilized and optimally controlled.