Psychological therapies for chronic pelvic pain: systematic review of randomized controlled trials

Rita Champaneria, Jane Daniels, Jane P Daniels, Amer Raza, Helen M Pattison, Helen Pattison, Khalid S. Khan
Acta obstetricia et gynecologica Scandinavica · 2011 · vol. 91(3) , pp. 281–286 · doi:10.1111/j.1600-0412.2011.01314.x · PMID:22050516 · W1523604189
Systematic review / meta-analysis OA: bronze CC0 ⤵ 10 in-corpus citations
🔓 Open OA copy View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This systematic review of four randomized controlled trials found insufficient evidence to conclude whether psychological interventions reduce self-reported pain in women with chronic pelvic pain.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Chronic pelvic pain (CPP), a common cause of disability in women, is a condition best viewed in the biopsychosocial framework. Psychological interventions are frequently considered alongside medical and surgical treatments. Our objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of psychological therapies for the treatment of CPP. Electronic literature searches were conducted in Medline, Embase, PsycInfo and DARE databases from database inception to April 2010. Reference lists of selected articles were searched for further articles. The studies selected were randomized controlled trials of psychological therapies in patients with CPP compared with no treatment, standard gynecological treatment or another form of psychological therapy. Two reviewers independently selected articles without language restrictions and extracted data covering study characteristics, study quality and results. Reduction in pain, measured using visual analog scales or other measurements, was the main outcome measure. Of the 107 citations identified, four studies satisfied the inclusion criteria. Compared with no psychological intervention, therapy produced a standardized mean pain score of -3.27 [95% confidence interval (CI) -4.52 to -2.02] and 1.11 (95% CI -0.05 to 2.27) at 3 months and -3.95 (95% CI -5.35 to -2.55) and 0.54 (95% CI -0.78 to 1.86) at 6 months and greater, based on a visual analog scale score of 0-10. The current evidence does not allow us to conclude whether psychological interventions have an effect on self-reported pain scores in women with CPP.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

chronic_pelvic_pain

MeSH descriptors

Pelvic Pain Psychotherapy Chronic Pain Chronic Pain Chronic Pain Female Humans Pain Measurement Pelvic Pain Pelvic Pain Self Report

Citation neighborhood (2-hop)

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. Outer rings show 2-hop neighbours — papers reached through the immediate citers/citees. [ collapse to 1-hop ]

References (33)

Cited by (9)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T21:09:35.770675+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK