The Women’s Health Symptom Survey (WHSS) is the first prospective epidemiological study to investigate the predictability of endometriosis at a global level. A study of this scale, involving to date 1,396 women from 19 centres in 13 countries, has never been undertaken before.
The WHSS has prospectively recruited 18-45 year old women having a first laparoscopy across centres in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia. The women were asked to complete a 25-item questionnaire either on paper or online in their own language prior to their surgery. Those found not to have endometriosis at laparoscopy act as controls.
Using standardised data collection in centres across the world and across diverse health care settings will maximise the opportunity to develop a validated, symptom-based, diagnostic tool.
A paper describing theWHSS-questionnaire-English, as well as results from the pilot study, was published in March 2009: Nnoaham KE, et al. Multi-center studies of the global impact of endometriosis and the predictive value of associated symptoms. Journal of Endometriosis 2009;1:36-45.
Preliminary data were presented at the XIX FIGO World Congress on Gynaecology and Obstetrics on 6 October 2009 and the 10th International Symposium on GnRH on 7 February 2011.
Publication of the final results of the study is expected in the first half of 2012.
The WHSS is coordinated through the University of Oxford with Dr Krina Zondervan as the principal investigator and Dr Kelechi Nnoaham as study coordinator.
→ WHSS-questionnaire (English)
→ Surgical questionnaire
WHSS Consortium
The WHSS consortium consists of: Assiut University Hospital (Egypt); Clinica Medicina da Mulher (Brazil); CRC Guatemala City (Guatemala); Fertility Physicians Northern California (USA); University of Barcelona (Spain); Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuero (Italy); University of Leuven (Belgium); University of Ibadan (Nigeria); University of California San Francisco (USA); Brigham and Women’s Hospital (USA); University of Oxford (United Kingdom); Guangdong Provincial Hospital of TCM (China); University of Siena (Italy); Cetnre de Reprodicao Humana de Campinas (Brazil); National Institutes of Health (USA); CEGYR (Argentina); National Maternity Hospital (Republic of Ireland); Khon Kaen University (Thailand)
Funding
The WHSS has been made possible through a grant from TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc (now Abbott Endocrine Inc).