Importance of Pelvic Muscle Tenderness Evaluation in Women with Chronic Pelvic Pain

Mary Lourdes Montenegro, Elaine Cristine Lemes Mateus-Vasconcelos, Júlio César Rosa e Silva, Antônio Alberto Nogueira, Francisco José Cândido dos Reis, Omero Benedicto Poli‐Neto
In: Pain Medicine · 2009 · vol. 11(2) , pp. 224–228 · doi:10.1111/j.1526-4637.2009.00758.x · PMID:20002593 · W2168237837
article OA: bronze CC0 ⤵ 24 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

Pelvic muscle tenderness was significantly more common in women with chronic pelvic pain and associated with higher depression scores, dyspareunia, and constipation.

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

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence of pelvic muscle tenderness in women with chronic pelvic pain (CPP) and to assess the importance of evaluating muscle tenderness in such women. DESIGN: Observational study of 48 healthy female volunteers and 108 women with CPP, who were clinically evaluated for pelvic muscle tenderness by two researchers blinded to all clinical data. RESULTS: The frequency of clinically detected pelvic muscle tenderness was significantly higher in women with CPP than in healthy volunteers (58.3% vs 4.2%, P < 0.001). Among women with CPP, those with pelvic muscle tenderness had higher Beck Depression Index scores (22 [6-42] vs 13 [3-39], P = 0.02) and higher rates of dyspareunia (63.5% [40/63] vs 28.9% [13/45], P < 0.004) and constipation (46.0% [29/63] vs 26.7% [12/45], P = 0.05) than those without pelvic muscle tenderness. CONCLUSION: Tenderness of pelvic muscles was highly prevalent among women with CPP and was associated with higher BDI scores and higher rates of dyspareunia and constipation. Determination of pelvic muscle tenderness may help in identifying women who require more intense treatment for CPP.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

chronic_pelvic_paindyspareunia

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 (31)

Cited by (24)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK