Conscious pain mapping by laparoscopy in women with chronic pelvic pain

Fred M. Howard, F M Howard, Howard FM, A M El-Minawi, El-Minawi AM, Sanchez RA, R A Sanchez
Obstetrics and gynecology · 2000 · vol. 96(6) , pp. 934–939 · doi:10.1016/s0029-7844(00)01056-5 · PMID:11084181 · W2076910620
Other OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 46 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-06 ⓘ

Laparoscopic conscious pain mapping successfully identified pain sources in 70% of women with chronic pelvic pain, revealing adhesions, endometriosis, and visceral pain syndrome as common causes.

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

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the findings and outcomes of laparoscopic conscious pain mapping in women with unsuccessfully treated chronic pelvic pain. METHODS: Fifty consecutive women with at least one prior procedure for chronic pelvic pain had conscious pain mapping. Operative findings and clinical outcomes were documented. Preoperative and postoperative pain levels were evaluated using visual analog scales. RESULTS: Conscious pain mapping was successful in 35 cases (70%). Twenty-nine patients had 42 specific positive sites, and six patients had diffuse visceroperitoneal pelvic tenderness. Adhesions and endometriosis accounted for 45% of positive lesions or sites. About half of women with endometriosis or adhesions mapped pain specifically to those lesions. For endometriosis, histologic but not visual diagnosis predicted positive mapping. Specific viscera accounted for 36% of positively mapped sites. Diagnoses of chronic visceral pain syndrome were suggested by the findings in 16 (46%) patients whose mapping was successful. Mean +/- standard deviation visual analog scale pain levels were 8.7 +/- 1.2 preoperatively and 5.5 +/- 3.7 postoperatively. Twenty-two women (44%) had decreased pain postoperatively and eight (16%) were pain-free. CONCLUSION: Conscious pain mapping can be done with reasonable success in women with prior surgical evaluations and treatments for chronic pelvic pain. Chronic visceral pain syndrome, adhesions, and endometriosis were the most common diagnoses.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosischronic_pelvic_pain

MeSH descriptors

Genital Diseases, Female Laparoscopy Laparoscopy Pain Measurement Pelvic Pain Procedural Sedation Procedural Sedation Adolescent Adolescent Adult Adult Awareness Awareness Chronic Disease Chronic Disease Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Female

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 (10)

Cited by (41)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-10-15T06:08:49.021275+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T20:59:38.477535+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK