What is the societal burden of endometriosis-associated symptoms? A prospective Belgian study

Sarah Klein, Thomas D'Hooghe, Thomas D’Hooghe, Christel Meuleman, Carmen D. Dirksen, Carmen Dirksen, Gerard Dunselman, Gerard A.J. Dunselman, Steven Simoens
Reproductive biomedicine online · 2013 · vol. 28(1) , pp. 116–124 · doi:10.1016/j.rbmo.2013.09.020 · PMID:24268732 · W1984583125
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06+body, 2026-06-06 ⓘ

This study found that annual costs for Belgian women with endometriosis averaged €9872, with 75% due to productivity loss, and a diagnosis delay of two years was common.

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

This prospective Belgian cost-of-illness study evaluated diagnosis delay, comorbidities, healthcare resource use, treatment patterns, costs, and quality of life in 134 women with endometriosis seen at a tertiary care center, using questionnaire-based data. The median diagnostic delay was 2 years after symptom onset, and almost all participants reported at least one comorbidity; total annual costs per patient were €9872, with productivity loss accounting for 75% of total costs, and hospitalizations, surgeries, infertility treatments, pain, and anxiety increasing costs significantly. Over a 1-year time horizon, patients generated an average of 0.82 quality-adjusted life years, reflecting quality-of-life impairment compared with perfect health. The study’s main limitation as stated is its focus on a single tertiary center population captured via questionnaires, which may not reflect all patients broadly, and relevance to endometriosis-associated symptoms was evaluated through this cohort. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it quantifies the societal and economic burden of endometriosis-associated symptoms, including healthcare use, productivity loss, and quality of life.

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Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Comorbidity Cost of Illness Endometriosis Endometriosis Quality of Life Belgium Belgium Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Humans Prevalence Prospective Studies Statistics, Nonparametric Surveys and Questionnaires

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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.

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