Condom accident - Please help

[diegomach]

Dear Doctor,

First of all, I would like to thank you for constantly responding with professionalism to the questions asked on this forum. You make a great job!

I would like to ask about a possible exposure to HIV after having sex last Friday night in Bahrain, in the Gulf region.
I am 25 years old man. I met a Thai lady in a bar and I remember that I was drunk at this moment. We had sex, both oral and vaginal penetration. The lady seemed to be clean and just before practicing vaginal penetration, she proposed me a condom. At the end, when I finished, I found that the condom was broken in one side. I did not feel any break during the penetration. It was only when I withdrew that I saw the condom broken.

I felt immediately worried. The lady told me that she was clean, that she was not a prostitute but manager of a Thai traditional massage. She also told me that she always uses condoms.

Sunday, I went  to see a doctor in a local hospital. He told me that these things happen regularly in Bahrain as this country is a the sexual heaven of the region. He told me that the risks to be exposed to HIV were extremely low. He also proceeded to a urine test to check if I had an IST or an urine infection. The results were negative.

My question is: what are the chances for me to be exposed to HIV and when do I have to proceed to an HIV test? To be honest with you Doctor, I am feeling extremely worried and my anxiety is getting higher everyday. I come from a conservative family and I am supposed to be married next year. Having HIV would be a catastrophy, a total disaster in my life. I am really ashamed by what happened. I promised myself to never having sex again with a person that I don’t know.

Please Doctor, tell me what should I do.
Thank you

[Edward W Hook, MD]

I'm confident you'll be fine.  Take care. EWH

[diegomach]

Thank you very much Doctor for your prompt response. I feel much better now. I will make the test after 4 and 8 weeks.

I hope everything will be fine.

Thanks again for your assistance

[Edward W Hook, MD]

Welcome to the Forum. I'll be pleased to address your questions and hope you'll find my comments helpful.  Your partner is correct that commercial sex workers in Bahrain do have a very low rate of HIV so the odds are quite low that she had HIV.  More importantly, during a single sex act, the risk of getting HIV is only 1 infection for every 1000 exposures so your risk from a statistical perspective, whether or not she had HIV (and again, it is unlikely that she did) is very low.  That your subsequent tests for HIV are negative is further verification that, among CSWs, she was relatively low risk.


So what to do now?  You've already done the first thing, getting checked for STDs - good job. the second thing is that ist is reasonable to get checked for HIV.  A test at 4 weeks will detect well over 90% of infections acquired 4 weeks earlier and at 8 weeks virtually all tests will be positive.  

Finally, please keep using condoms and don't let this mishap stop you. condoms fail in about 1% of uses but that is not a reason not to use them. They work the other 99% of the time.

Hope these comments are helpful to you. Try not to worry, your risk is very, very low.  EWH