Assessment of quality of life, psychological aspects, and sexual function of women with endometriosis according to pain and infertility: a cross sectional study

Purpose To evaluate the quality of life, sexual function, anxiety, and depression of women with endometriosis according to pain symptoms and infertility.

This cross-sectional multicenter study included 229 women with endometriosis followed up at a tertiary hospital in Campinas, a tertiary hospital in São Paulo, and a reproductive medicine clinic in Campinas from 2018 to 2021. The women were divided into four groups according to the presence of pain symptoms and infertility. The Endometriosis Health Profile Questionnaire, Female Sexual Function Index, Beck Depression Inventory, and Beck Anxiety Index were applied to assess quality of life, sexual function, depression, and anxiety of women with endometriosis.

The women were grouped as follows: group 1 (45 women without infertility and without pain), group 2 (73 women without infertility and with pain), group 3 (49 women with infertility and without pain), and group 4 (62 women with infertility and pain). Of the women with infertility, the majority had primary infertility. Most women had deep endometriosis (p = 0.608). Women with pain had higher anxiety and depression scores and worse quality of life than women without pain (p < 0.001). Regarding sexual function, all the groups were at risk for sexual dysfunction (p = 0.671). The group of women with pain and infertility have worse anxiety scores (25.31 ± 15.96) and depression (18.81 ± 11.16) than the other groups.

Pain symptoms worsen anxiety, depression, and quality of life of women with endometriosis and when associated with infertility, greater impairment of psychological aspects may occur. Similar content being viewed by others Data availability The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

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Silva has conceptualized and designed the study and helped in the acquisition of the date, interpretation of results and writing the manuscript; M. B. Meneguetti and F. Torelli helped in the acquisition of the date and C.L. Benetti-Pinto and L. Gibran have reviewed the manuscript. All authors have consented to the submission of this manuscript and have approved its final version. Corresponding author Ethics declarations Conflict of interest The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Ethical approval This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee from the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, School of Medical Sciences, University of Campinas, Brazil (31/01/2018/ number: 81213717.0.1001.0069). Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Additional information Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Rights and permissions Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. About this article Cite this article Silva, F.P., Yela, D.A., de Barros Meneguetti, M. et al. Assessment of quality of life, psychological aspects, and sexual function of women with endometriosis according to pain and infertility: a cross sectional study. Arch Gynecol Obstet 309, 2741–2749 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-024-07464-8 Received: Accepted: Published: Version of record: Issue date: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-024-07464-8