Delay in the diagnosis of endometriosis: a survey of women from the USA and the UK

R Hadfield, Ruth M. Hadfield, Helen J. Mardon, H Mardon, David J. Barlow, D Barlow, S Kennedy, Stephen Kennedy
Human Reproduction · 1996 · vol. 11(4) , pp. 878–880 · doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.humrep.a019270 · PMID:8671344 · W2161529162
article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 423 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-06 ⓘ

This survey of 218 women found a significantly longer delay in endometriosis diagnosis for US women (11.7 years) compared to UK women (8.0 years).

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

We investigated the length of time between the onset of pain symptoms and the surgical diagnosis of endometriosis in women from the UK and the USA. A total of 218 women with surgically confirmed disease, recruited through endometriosis self-help groups, completed a postal questionnaire. The mean +/- SD delay in diagnosis for women from the USA was 11.73 +/- 9.05 years, significantly higher than the equivalent delay of 7.96 +/- 7.92 years for women from the UK (P < 0.01). The stage of disease did not effect the length of time between the onset of symptoms and diagnosis. Therefore there is considerable delay in the diagnosis of endometriosis for women from both the UK and the USA. Efforts to reduce this delay are required to minimize the suffering of women with this disease.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

mesh:D004715endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Adult Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis England Female Humans Time Factors United States

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (5)

Cited by (50)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-04T01:30:01.192114+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:11:02.671803+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK