Pelvic Pain Pinpointed

Has your physician ever asked you that probing "where does it hurt" question? And then with a "hummmm" seem to narrow in on the diagnosis? Well, in part there is some veracity to that aspect of the art of medicine, and in part, it's been a whole lot of guess work. Because your pain, is well, your pain, and it's often hard to correlate a specific pain with a specific organ let alone a specific diagnosis. So a group of scientists and researchers out of the University of Surrey in Chertsey, United Kingdom have tried to study the various dimensions of endometriosis pain to determine if specific pains go along with the diagnosis in an attempt to help us use this in understanding women who can pinpoint their pain. The researchers have pointed out that data from the mid 1980s showed the more pain you have with your periods the more likely it is that you have a diagnosis of endometriosis. So we have known for several years that about 85% of women with endometriosis have one or more of the following symptoms: cramps with periods, abdominal or pelvic pain, heavy periods, or pain with sex. But about 30% of women without endometriosis have those symptoms too. So when we've discussed the pain symptoms before women have to understand there is an overlap of symptomatology. One of the writers on a comment about ablations mentioned she was once told to have a hysterectomy, but in fact she had only IBS, but it is known that these symptoms are convergent! This new research has found that here is more dyschezia (difficulty in having a bowel movement, straining, discomfort) in women with endometriosis. And women with endometriosis are more likely to report that their pain ins throbbing, gnawing, or dragging down their legs. Interestingly these researchers weren't able to say that the pains were more likely on the left or the right although prior studies have indicated that endometriosis is more likely to be more extensive on  the left than the right.