Is the Menopause Rating Scale accurate for diagnosing sexual dysfunction among climacteric women?
BACKGROUND
Although several tools have been designed to assess quality of life (QoL) among middle-aged women their capacity to specifically assess sexual dysfunction (SD) remains uncertain. Moreover, if SD impairs QoL within this population, then sexual assessment becomes a key issue.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the accuracy of the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS) in diagnosing SD among climacteric women.


METHODS
In this cross-sectional study 370 women aged 40-59 years filled out the MRS and the Female Sexual Functioning Index (FSFI) simultaneously. SD among surveyed women was defined as those obtaining a total FSFI score of <or=26.55. A receiver-operator curve (ROC) was used to plot and measure the diagnostic accuracy of one MRS item (item 8, assessing sexual problems) using the FSFI total score as a gold standard.


RESULTS
Mean age of surveyed women was 49.3+/-5.8 years. A 56.5% of them were married, 44.3% were postmenopausal, 66.8% were sexually active and 57% had SD (FSFI total score <or=26.55). ROC curve determined a score >or=1 in the MRS item 8 as a cut-off value for discriminating women with SD (78% sensitivity and 62% specificity with an area below the curve of 0.70 Swett).


CONCLUSIONS
The MRS was moderately accurate for diagnosing SD among climacteric women. More research is warranted in this regard.
Jara
Daniela
D
Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile.
Fuenzalida
Andrea
A
Figueroa
Rodrigo
R
del Prado
Monica
M
Flores
Daniel
D
Blümel
Juan E
JE
Chedraui
Peter
P
D000328:Adult; D002979:Climacteric / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D012372:ROC Curve; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012735:Sexual Dysfunction, Physiological / Q000175:diagnosis*; D020018:Sexual Dysfunctions, Psychological / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires