Younger Women With Endometriosis Feel More Pain

Women with endometriosis age 24 and younger report more pain during periods and intercourse compared to those older than age 24.

Key Points

Highlights: 

• Younger women with endometriosis experience more period pain and pain during intercourse compared to their older peers.

Importance:

• Acknowledging this can ensure that younger women with endometriosis are given more clinical attention. 

What's done here:

• A single-center retrospective cohort study in a tertiary referral hospital assessed the pain experienced by 826 women clinically diagnosed with endometriosis.
• The visual analog scale was used to assess pain (noncyclic pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea, dyschezia, dysuria, and dyspareunia). 
• The results were compared for the patients who were age 24 or younger and those who were older than age 24 at the time of diagnosis. 

Key results:

• Women with endometriosis who were age 24 or younger reported significantly higher pain scores for period pain, painful intercourse, and chronic pelvic pain than women who were older than 24.
• This was the case even when only women not receiving hormonal treatment were considered.

Limitation:

• This was a single-center study and the results may not be the same for all women.
• The retrospective nature of the study means that the results may be affected by recollection bias.

Lay Summary

Younger women with endometriosis feel more period pain (dysmenorrhea) and pain during intercourse (dyspareunia) compared to older women with the disease, found a new study published in the Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology. 

Acknowledging this fact can make sure that patients are diagnosed in a timely manner and receive the treatment they need. “Dyspareunia in adolescents in particular merits clinical attention,” according to the authors of the study.

In order to analyze the clinical characteristics and severity of symptoms in adolescents with endometriosis, a team of researchers led by Dr. Sara Imboden from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University Hospital of Bern in Switzerland conducted a single-center retrospective cohort study in 826 patients who were clinically diagnosed with endometriosis between January 2017 and December 2020 at a certified endometriosis center.

Of these 826 patients, 144 (17.4%) were age 24 or younger while 682 (82.6%) were older than age 24. 

The results showed that patients in the first group, i.e. those age 24 or younger reported significantly higher pain scores for dysmenorrhea, dyspareunia, and chronic pelvic pain compared to the older patients. 

The researchers then removed the patients who were receiving hormonal treatment to manage their condition from the analysis and found similar results.

Research Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36343859/