Can general exercise be used as an empowering tool among women with endometriosis? Experiences and practice among women with endometriosis and women’s health physiotherapists

Merete Kolberg Tennfjord, Rakel Gabrielsen, Kari Bø, Marie Ellström Engh, Marianne Molin
In: Research Square · 2024 · doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-4010890/v1 · W4392581436
preprint OA: green CC0 ⤵ 1 in-corpus citation
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06+body, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This qualitative study explored women with endometriosis' experiences with exercise, finding that knowledge and supervised programs enhance safety and belonging, while a survey revealed few physiotherapists incorporate exercise into their treatment.

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⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This mixed-methods paper examined how general exercise is experienced by women with endometriosis and how women’s health physiotherapists in the Nordic countries implement exercise as part of treatment. Qualitative interviews with 19 women who had participated in an RCT comparing pain education plus supervised exercise versus pain education alone found that knowledge about exercise benefits supported informed self-management, and that exercise felt less frightening and more manageable when exposed to different intensities in a safe, supportive setting, with group participation adding a sense of belonging; a key limitation noted by the authors is the small, convenience-based post-RCT sample and the qualitative focus on participants able to join classes. A cross-sectional survey of 108 physiotherapists showed most reported providing manual treatments only, while a minority combined manual treatments with regular supervised general exercise. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it explores women’s empowerment experiences with general exercise following an endometriosis exercise RCT and assesses physiotherapists’ exercise practices for endometriosis care.

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Outcome instruments

COS-Endo-2020

Condition tags

endometriosis

Citation neighborhood

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. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (26)

Cited by (1)

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