An Assessment of Polish Women’s Level of Knowledge about Endometriosis – A Pilot Study

Abstract

Introduction: Insufficient knowledge about endometriosis among women is one of the causes of its delayed diagnoses. Due to the exceptional trickiness of symptoms, the most important part is played by proper and exhaustive knowledge, allowing its early detection. The objective of the study was to assess Polish women's awareness of endometriosis. Methods: The pilot studies were performed with the participation of 200 women, in an average age of M=33.65 years (SD = 11.45), who filled in the authors’ questionnaire related to self-assessment of the level of knowledge about the disease, its symptoms, late effects and directions of a remediation procedure. The statistical analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 suite. It included a frequency analysis, a one-way analysis of variance ANOVA, a single variable regression analysis and Student’s t-test for independent samples. Results: Almost 84% of women had heard about endometriosis, while only 1/3 of them considered their knowledge sufficient or good. Very good knowledge was declared by 4.5% of women, and 16.1% had never heard about it. The knowledge level turned out significantly higher (p = 0.001) among women with medical education. Polish women acquired their knowledge mainly from the Internet and the experience of other women. They see reasons behind their lack of knowledge in the still existing ‘taboo’ related to menstruation, the absence of information in the media and education in schools, which is critical according to 92.4% women.Conclusions: Polish women's level of knowledge about endometriosis is insufficient, which should be changed. Higher awareness is presented by women with medical education, and the higher the level of knowledge, the larger the interest of women in healthy behaviour.