Current usage of qualitative research in female pelvic pain: a systematic review

Purpose Qualitative research has received growing attention in the multidisciplinary investigation of patients' perceptions about chronic diseases. The purpose of this systematic review was to characterize the usage of qualitative research in women with chronic pelvic pain (CPP).

We performed a structured search in Web of Science, Pubmed, and EMBASE platforms until June 2019. The search combined the keywords: "pelvic pain", "endometriosis", "dyspareunia", "dysmenorrhea", "vaginismus", "focus groups", "qualitative research", "hermeneutics", "grounded theory", and "women". Qualitative studies on female CPP were included and the main findings combined using thematic synthesis.

We found 1211 citations, of which 52 were included in this review. The majority of included studies were based on phenomenological design. The main method for data collection was semi-structured interviews. Endometriosis was the theme of 23 studies, chronic pelvic pain of eight, dysmenorrhea of eight, dyspareunia of four, interstitial cystitis of two, vaginismus of two, vulvodynia of two, and pelvic inflammatory disease of one study. We found a wide variety of contributions. Among them, the impact of the disease on women's lives was the commonest.

Qualitative research has the potential to reveal and explain several aspects of CPP in women. The medical community may better accept knowledge gained from these studies if the methods are described more transparently in published articles. Similar content being viewed by others

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Author information Authors and Affiliations Contributions BHM protocol development, data collection, data analysis, and manuscript editing. TLP protocol development and data collection. OBPN, JCRS, and AAN manuscript editing. FJCR protocol development, data collection, data analysis, and manuscript writing. Corresponding author Ethics declarations Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest related to the contents of this article. Additional information Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Rights and permissions About this article Cite this article Mellado, B.H., Pilger, T.L., Poli-Neto, O.B. et al. Current usage of qualitative research in female pelvic pain: a systematic review. Arch Gynecol Obstet 300, 495–501 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-019-05212-x Received: Accepted: Published: Version of record: Issue date: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-019-05212-x