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


METHODS
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.


CONCLUSIONS
The CPP questionnaire can be considered as a validated tool for primary screening of CPP.
van Os-Bossagh
Purana
P
Research Group Social Health (OMG/GAK), P.O. Box 213, 3000 AE, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. purana.bossagh@gak.nl
Pols
Trudy
T
Hop
Wim C J
WC
Nelemans
Ton
T
Erdmann
Wilhelm
W
Drogendijk
Aat C
AC
Bohnen
Arthur M
AM
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D004414:Dyspareunia / Q000175:diagnosis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009426:Netherlands / Q000453:epidemiology; D017699:Pelvic Pain / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D010865:Pilot Projects; D015995:Prevalence; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires