The Aim of This Research is to Better Understand How Complete Spinal Cord Injury May Change Erogenous Zones in Adult Males

Erogenous zones are regions of the body that elicit sexual pleasure and trigger or enhance sexual arousal when appropriately stimulated. The discovery of other forms of physical intimacy that move away from the traditional scripts of phallo-centric male sexuality (Earle et al., 2020)(Giurleo et al., 2022)(Ostrander, 2009)(Burns et al., 2008) could improve sexual pleasure. The stimulation of hypersensitive regions in the skin areas corresponding to the lesion level and above has the potential to represent one of the strategies to compensate the lack of sensitivity of the genital-sexual organs (Hohmann, 1972)(Bach-y-Rita, 1999)(Elliott, 2002)(Anderson et al., 2007)(Lopez et al., 2008)(Alexander \& Marson, 2018). But again, these data are scares and limited to few testimonials.

The aim of the present research program is to identify, define and characterize erogenous zones in men with complete SCI in the absence of sensitivity of the genitals.

The study design is a qualitative observational study, and the consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) will be followed (Tong et al., 2007). A minimum of fourteen semi-structured interviews with men with a complete SCI followed in a neuro-urology department will be conducted with the recruitment stopped once data saturation is achieved.