Surgery Improves the Sex Life and Sleep of Women With Endometriosis

Pain decreases while quality of life, sexual function, and sleep improve following surgery in women with endometriosis.

Key Points

Highlights:

• Endometriosis surgery improves the quality of life, sexual function, and sleep of patients with the disease.

Importance:

• Surgical treatment should be performed based on the fertility status and desires of patients with the disease.

What's done here:

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35451649/Researchers compared the scores of patients with endometriosis in the areas of quality of life, sexual life, and sleep before and after endometriosis surgery.

Key results:

• There were statistically significant improvements in the pain scores, quality of life, sexual function, and sleep of patients with endometriosis following surgery.
• These improvements were independent of the disease stage.

Limitations:

• The sample size is relatively small.
• The evaluation after surgery was done 3 months later. A second later evaluation could lead to different findings.

Lay Summary

Endometriosis surgery improves patients’ quality of life, sexual function, and sleep confirms a new study by Turkish researchers published in the scientific journal Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics. According to the first author Dr. Belfin Nur Arici Halici of the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Bezmialem University in Istanbul, Turkey, and the co-authors of the study, “surgical or medical treatment can be performed considering the complaints and fertility status of the patients.”

It was already known that endometriosis affects the quality of life, sleep, and sexual life of patients because of the pain it causes. 

In the present study, the researchers compared the scores in the visual analog scale for pelvic pain, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, the Endometriosis Health Profile-30 Questionnaire, and the Female Sexual Function Index of 56 women with endometriosis, ages 18 to 60 before and 3 months after endometriosis surgery.

The researchers found that there were statistically significant improvements in pain scores, quality of life, sexual function, and sleep of all patients independently of the stage of the disease they had. 

Research Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35451649/