Sexual loss in relation to other functional losses for spinal cord injured males.

To understand more fully the importance of sexual loss for spinal cord injured patients, paraplegic and quadriplegic men were asked to rank order functional losses associated with their respective injuries. In addition, staff members of the rehabilitation team were asked to predict the relative importance of these functional losses to their cord injured patients. The data indicate that relative to actual patient perceptions, staff predictions tended to overemphasize the relative importance of normal genital sexual functioning. Some implications of these findings for comprehensive rehabilitation programs are discussed.