Questionnaire as diagnostic tool in chronic pelvic pain (CPP): a pilot study

P. van Os-Bossagh, Purana van Os-Bossagh, Trudy Pols, Wim C J Hop, Ton Nelemans, W. Erdmann, Wilhelm Erdmann, Aat C Drogendijk, A. C. Drogendijk, Arthur M. Bohnen
European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology · 2002 · vol. 103(2) , pp. 173–178 · doi:10.1016/s0301-2115(02)00041-6 · PMID:12069743 · W2146744778
Other OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 5 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-10 ⓘ

This pilot study investigated the utility of a questionnaire in diagnosing chronic pelvic pain.

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

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: No standard screening instrument is available enabling physicians to assign the diagnosis chronic pelvic pain (CPP) to women with lower abdominal pain. Therefore, our aim was to evaluate an easy-to-use questionnaire, which can be applied as a validated primary screening test for diagnosing CPP. STUDY DESIGN: From the general female population, 577 women completed a questionnaire addressing chronic symptoms in the pelvic region. Included were (amongst others) questions on lower abdominal pain, low back pain, voiding symptoms, dyspareunia, pelveo-perineal dysesthetic feelings and evacuation problems. Serious chronic lower abdominal pain of unknown origin was considered as CPP. Three criteria were applied to validate the questionnaire: construct validity, comparison with results of a previous study and content validity. In addition, the internal consistency was checked to ascertain the reliability of the questionnaire. RESULTS: All items, with the exception of those concerning voiding symptoms and dyspareunia, withstood the validity tests applied, were interrelated and occurred significantly more often in women with CPP than those without. There were no significant differences in the frequency of the occurrence of low back pain, dyspareunia and evacuation problems between CPP women in the current community study and outpatients diagnosed with CPP in an earlier study performed at the University Hospital Rotterdam. Compared to our current study group, pelveo-perineal dysesthesia (PPD) and voiding symptoms were significantly more often reported by the CPP outpatients. CONCLUSION: The CPP questionnaire can be considered as a validated tool for primary screening of CPP.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

chronic_pelvic_pain

MeSH descriptors

Pelvic Pain Surveys and Questionnaires Adult Aged Aged, 80 and over Dyspareunia Dyspareunia Female Humans Middle Aged Netherlands Netherlands Pelvic Pain Pelvic Pain Pilot Projects Prevalence Reproducibility of Results

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 (31)

Cited by (5)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T21:00:31.392641+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK