Impact of endometriosis on women’s lives: a qualitative study

Abstract

BackgroundThis study aimed to explore women’s experiences of the impact of endometriosis and whether there are differences across three age groups.MethodsA qualitative descriptive design was conducted using semi-structured focus group discussions with 35 Australian women with endometriosis, in three age groups. All tape-recorded discussions were transcribed verbatim and read line by line to extract meaningful codes and categories using NVivo 9 software through a thematic analysis approach. Categories were then clustered into meaningful themes.ResultsParticipants’ ages ranged from 17 to 53 years and had a history of 2 to 40 years living with endometriosis, with an average delay time to diagnosis of 8.1 years. Two main themes emerged: (1) experiences of living with endometriosis, and (2) impact of endometriosis on women’s lives, with 14 discrete categories. The results showed similarities and differences of the impact between the three age groups. The most highlighted impacts were on marital/sexual relationships, social life, and on physical and psychological aspects in all three age groups, but with different orders of priority. Education was the second most highlighted for the 16–24 years, life opportunities and employment for the 25–34 years; and financial impact for those 35 years and above.ConclusionsOur findings show that endometriosis impacts negatively on different aspects of women’s lives. A better understanding of these findings could help to decrease the negative impact of endometriosis by guiding service delivery and future research to meet more effectively the needs of women and teenagers with this condition.

Impact of Changing Lifestyle on Endometriosis Related Pain

“…Better understanding of the long term and wide ranging impact of endometriosis on women"s lives at different life stages could benefit policy makers, health professionals and the lay population in reducing the negative impact of endometriosis and improving women"s life experiences [19].Chronic pain was the root cause for study the impact of endometriosis experienced by women in this research. Education was interrupted, careers impeded and social participation curtailed because of the impact of symptoms on everyday functioning.…”

Chocolate cyst became ovarian abscess following IVF: a serious surgical emergency

“…6 Besides pelvic pain endometriosis is also responsible for dyspareunia and infertility. Senapati et al described that IVF is better option to achieve fecundity rather than reoperation in case of infertility with endometriosis.…”

Polymorphisms in VEGF and KDR genes in the development of endometriosis: a systematic review

“…8,21,23,24,26,[31][32][33]36,37 It has been described in the literature that about 11% of the women with endometriosis have no symptoms of the disease. 6,7 In addition, the average time between the onset of the symptoms and the diagnosis of endometriosis is extensively long, ranging between 7 to 12 years. 58 We emphasize that 4 articles were excluded from this review, 22,25,29,30 because they did not use adequate control to evaluate the magnitude of SNPs association to VEGF gene and the development of endometriosis.…”

“…5 Women with endometriosis may be asymptomatic (10.7%), however, most of them present symptoms in different intensities, the main ones are: dysmenorrhoea (52-97%), chronic pelvic pain (22-69%), infertility (25-59%), dyspareunia (44-71%) and intestinal symptoms (71%) and cyclic urinary (60%). [6][7][8] Endometriosis causes physical, mental and social consequences to women, bearing in mind that their psyche, interpersonal and martial relationships are affected by the problems of the symptoms, in particularly, by the difficulty of bearing children. 9 There are several theories explaining about the appearance of endometriosis; however its etiology is still not clear.…”