Quality of life associated to chronic pelvic pain is independent of endometriosis diagnosis-a cross-sectional survey

Carlos A Souza, Carlos Augusto Bastos de Souza, Luciano Machado de Oliveira, Luciano M Oliveira, Camila Scheffel, Vanessa K Genro, Vanessa Krebs Genro, Virginia Rosa, Virgínia de Oliveira Rosa, Marcia F Chaves, Márcia Lorena Fagundes Chaves, João Sabino Cunha‐Filho, João S Cunha Filho
Health and quality of life outcomes · 2011 · vol. 9(1) , pp. 41 · doi:10.1186/1477-7525-9-41 · PMID:21663624 · PMC3123165 · W2151245760
article OA: gold CC0 ⤵ 81 in-corpus citations
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This study found that higher chronic pelvic pain scores negatively correlate with psychological and environmental quality of life, but endometriosis diagnosis does not further impact these scores.

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

This cross-sectional survey studied 57 women aged 25–48 who underwent laparoscopy for chronic pelvic pain (CPP), assessing pain intensity via a visual analogue scale and quality of life using the WHOQOL-bref across physical, psychological, social, and environmental domains, along with anxiety and depressive symptoms. Women with higher CPP pain scores had lower quality of life specifically in the psychological and environmental domains, with psychological domain scores negatively correlated with pain intensity. When stratified by laparoscopy findings, quality of life scores were similar between women with endometriosis and those with other causes of pelvic pain, with all endometriosis cases classified as minimal and mild. The study’s limitation is its cross-sectional design and its restriction of endometriosis to minimal/mild disease when evaluating diagnosis-related differences. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it tests whether having endometriosis (vs other CPP causes) adds additional impact on quality of life in women with chronic pelvic pain.

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Pain is strongly related to poor quality of life. We performed a cross-sectional study in a university hospital to investigate quality of life in women suffering from chronic pelvic pain (CPP) due to endometriosis and others conditions. METHODS: Fifty-seven patients aged between 25 and 48 years-old submitted to laparoscopy because of CPP were evaluated for quality of life and depressive symptoms. Quality of life was accessed by a quality of life instrument [World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment-Bref (WHOQOL-bref)]. Causes of pelvic pain were determined and severity of CPP was measured with a visual analogue scale. According to the intensity of pelvic pain score, patients were classified in two groups (group Low CPP 25th percentile). Four dimensions on quality of life were measured (physical, psychological, social and environmental). We stratified the analysis of quality of life according CPP causes (presence or not of endometriosis in laparoscopy). RESULTS: Patients with higher pain scores presented lower quality of life status in psychological and environmental dimensions. We found a negative correlation between pain scores and psychological dimension of quality of life (r = -0.310, P = .02). Quality of life scores were similar between groups with and without endometriosis (physical 54.2 ± 12.8 and 51.1 ± 13.8, P = 0.504; psychological 56.2 ± 14.4 and 62.8 ± 12.4, P = 0.182; social 55.6 ± 18.2 and 62.1 ± 19.1, P = 0.325; environmental 59.2 ± 11.7 61.2 ± 10.8, P = 0.608; respectively) CONCLUSIONS: Higher pain scores are correlated to lower quality of life; however the fact of having endometriosis in addition to CPP does not have an additional impact upon the quality of life.

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Condition tags

endometriosischronic_pelvic_pain

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Pelvic Pain Quality of Life Adult Anxiety Anxiety Chronic Disease Chronic Disease Cross-Sectional Studies Depression Depression Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Humans Laparoscopy Male Middle Aged

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