Pain Cognition Impacts Health Related Quality of Life in Women with Endometriosis

Knowing how the pain cognition influences health-related quality of life, can help better treatment for pain symptoms.

Key Points

Highlights:

The cognition of pain is an important factor influencing health-related quality of life in women with endometriosis

Importance:

This finding is important because it can help doctors adopt the right approach in treating pain in endometriosis, by considering cognitive behavioral therapy for example. 

What’s done here?

Using several questionnaires, researchers assessed the health-related quality o life, pain cognition, and intensity of pain in women with and without endometriosis.

Key results:

• Health-related quality of life was significantly impaired in women with endometriosis compared to those without.
• The intensity of pain intensity and its cognition were independent factors influencing the health-related quality of life of women with endometriosis.
• Women with endometriosis had a significantly more negative pain cognition compared to those without.
• Women with endometriosis reported more pain anxiety and catastrophizing, and were over-vigilant towards pain compared to those without.

Limitations of the study:

• The study population was relatively small.
• All women included in the study had severe endometriosis so the results may be influenced by selection bias. 

Lay Summary

The cognition of pain is an important factor influencing health-related quality of life in women with endometriosis, suggests a study published in the scientific journal Fertility and Sterility.  

This finding is important because it can help doctors treat pain in the right way.

“Clinicians (…) may consider treating pain symptoms in a multidimensional, individualized way in which the psychological aspects are taken into account,” wrote Dr. Mieke van Aken at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and the co-authors of the study. 

They added that more attention should be paid to the psychological aspects of care when managing endometriosis-associated pain.

Health-related quality of life is a person’s perceived physical and mental health over time. It focuses on the impact of health status on quality of life. Chronic pain, as in the case of endometriosis, has a negative impact on health-related quality of life.

In order to assess how the intensity of pain and its perception, impact to health-related quality of life in women with endometriosis, the researchers led by Dr. Annemiek Nap at Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics at Rijnstate in The Netherlands, analyzed 50 women with endometriosis and 42 without. 

They used two different questionnaires in order to measure the women’s health-related quality of life. These were the generic short form health survey (SF-36) and the endometriosis health profile 30 (EHP-30). For pain cognition, the researchers used the pain catastrophizing scale (PCS), the pain vigilance and awareness questionnaire (PVAQ), and the pain anxiety symptoms scale (PASS). Finally, to assess the intensity of pain, they used the verbal numeric rating scale (NRS).

They found that firstly health-related quality of life was significantly impaired in women with endometriosis compared to those without.

In addition, the intensity of the pain and its cognition were independent factors influencing the health-related quality of life of women with endometriosis.

Finally, women with endometriosis had a significantly more negative pain cognition compared to those without as they reported more pain anxiety and catastrophizing, and were over-vigilant towards pain.

Research Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28911933