06:38 PM CST on Friday, March 31, 2006

By Kevin Moran / The Houston Chronicle

Lonnie Burgett is a happy man. He has been married to a 48-year-old Chinese schoolteacher for four months and he has a normal sex life.

What's so remarkable about that?

Burgett, 49, has severe heart disease and, less than a year ago, suffered from erectile dysfunction as well as chronic, deep depression. He was unable to have sex, a condition fairly common in men 50 and over but an epidemic among men with heart disease.

``I'm one of the happiest men in the world,'' said Burgett, who married his wife, Guoquing Burgett, in Harbin, China, near the Chinese-Russian border on Thanksgiving Day. ``On our honeymoon, we had the most amazing 30 days of my life.''

The couple met in May via the Internet.

Since 2004, Burgett has been treated by Dr. Ernest Schwarz, a University of Texas Medical Branch cardiologist whose research helped lead to the establishment last year of a clinic at the Galveston medical center designed to help people with heart disease live more normal lives by overcoming erectile dysfunction and other problems.

Formally opened in November, the clinic has taken on about 50 patients so far and demand is growing, Schwarz said.

``We are trying to concentrate on high-risk patients like Mr. Burgett,`` Schwarz said. ''Most of our patients have come from private physicians who have not treated them for sexual problems because these physicians say these patients have such bad heart conditions or such bad diabetes or such long histories of high blood pressure that it is too dangerous to even think about sex or treating their sexual dysfunction or giving them any medication such as Viagra or even thinking about penile implants.''

But with treatment to stabilize and improve their heart conditions, ``all this can be done and most of these patients can achieve a condition stable enough (for treatment) or reach a point where they can tolerate surgery for their erectile problems,'' Schwarz said.

Today, UTMB is hosting the second annual conference on ``Sex and the Heart.'' The conference, not open to the general public, is designed in part to spread word of research not only about treatment of sexual dysfunction among patients with heart disease, but to dispel beliefs among many primary care physicians, urologists and cardiologists that drugs such as Levitra, Cialis and Viagra should not be prescribed for people who suffer from serious heart disease because the drugs can cause serious side effects or kill them.

Schwarz said the drugs can be safely used by many men with cardiovascular problems. But he said it takes ``time and effort'' by physicians and patients to decide which drugs can be used and achieve results.

Heart-strengthening drugs or special pacemaker-like devices can restore sexual function in about 20 percent of patients, Schwarz said.

Enlargement of pelvic arteries using inserted balloons can help another 25 percent or so of patients resume normal sex lives, he said.

Some heart patients can resume sexual activity with changes from or additions to blood-pressure and other drugs they might be taking, Schwarz said.

And Viagra and other prescription sex aids can be used safely by many men who have cardiovascular problems.

But he said not all people with sexual dysfunctions can be restored.

In recent months, Schwarz said 100 patients who ended up at UTMB with heart failure were surveyed about sexual issues.

Schwarz said 80 percent of male respondents - about 30 percent more than expected - and 50 percent of female participants reported sexual problems. Such research is scarce nationally so far, but Schwarz said UTMB's small sample was surprising.

More than 60 percent of the respondents said they were seeking medical help for sexual problems, but the vast majority said they feared medications ``mainly because they're scared to do that because of their heart disease,'' Schwarz said.

He said communication between physicians and patients about sexual problems will be re-emphasized at this year's conference.

Burgett, who attributes his divorce after a 30-year marriage to sexual dysfunction, is scheduled to speak at the conference. He said he'll tell participants that, although his heart disease still threatens his life, Schwarz has changed, among other things, the mix of drugs Burgett had used for years and he no longer lives in constant fear that having sex would kill him.

``When I first started this deal, I couldn't carry two bags of groceries up the stairs to my house,'' Burgett said. ``I had a great fear of meeting women because I knew that, when the time came, I would not be able to perform.''

TREATMENT OPTIONS:

- Evaluate severity and try to stabilize heart disease.

- Provide urological, psychiatric and other medical care, if necessary.

- Use drugs and possibly physical therapy to improve heart strength, if possible.

- Determine if drugs already in use are affecting sexual functions.

- Devise drug therapy that will treat heart disease, diabetes, depression and other diseases and conditions but still allow use of Viagra or other pharmaceutical sexual aids

- Evaluate for possible penile implant.

kevin.moran@chron.com