International Women’s Day prompts us to celebrate women and womanhood. However, recent research suggests that women may face more than their fair share of challenges, including in receiving appropriate medical care. What are some of these challenges, and why do they occur?
Women have played a vital role in the improvement of medical care across clinical fields.
Figures such as Dorothea Dix, who helped change the face of mental health care, Rosalind Franklin, who contributed to the discovery of human DNA structure, and Dr. Virginia Apgar, who put together the evaluation criteria assessing the health status of newborn infants, have revolutionized medicine.
Despite this, women and girls across the world still face challenges and discrimination in medical settings.
Only last year, for instance, senior staff from the Tokyo Medical School, as well as from Juntendo and Kitasato Universities in Japan, admitted to manipulating entrance exam scores so that fewer women candidates would qualify for their courses.
These admissions spurred endless debates about the degree to which women who choose medical care as a profession keep on facing waves of discrimination.
Such problems, however, do not stop at women trying to build a career in medical sciences. According to some reports, women also face discrimination as patients. Sometimes, their doctors fail to diagnose conditions they are struggling with, or offer them the wrong diagnosis and consequently, the wrong kind of therapy.
In this Spotlight feature, we will look at some of the conditions that doctors underdiagnosed in women and explore some of the possible reasons behind these lacks in medical care.
One of the chronic conditions that many women struggle with for a long time before they manage to receive a correct diagnosis — if they ever do — is endometriosis.
Endometriosis is a progressive gynecological condition, which doctors currently consider incurable. Endometriosis occurs when the type of tissue that usually only lines the uterus grows in other parts of the body. This can include the ovaries, fallopian tubes, urethra, but also the bowel, kidneys, and other organs.
Symptoms of this condition include debilitating pain in the pelvic area, as well as other parts of the body, heavy and persistent menstrual bleeding, spotting between periods, pain during sex with vaginal penetration, nausea and vomiting, severe headaches, and persistent fatigue.
These symptoms can often have a severe impact on an individual’s quality of life, affecting their productivity, other aspects of their physical and mental health, and their relationships.
Estimates in the journal Fertility and Sterility indicate that 10–15 percent of women of reproductive age live with this condition, and 70 percent of women who experience chronic pelvic pain actually have endometriosis.
As the authors of that study paper write, “The time from the onset of symptoms to diagnosis is disturbingly long.” Two-thirds of the people they spoke to begin to experience symptoms of endometriosis during adolescence. However, most of these people do not seek medical attention immediately, and once they do, it can take doctors 10–12 years to make a correct diagnosis.
Typically, doctors can only diagnose endometriosis by conducting a laparoscopy. This is a minor surgical procedure in which a doctor inserts a tiny camera into the abdomen to look for lesions and abnormalities.
A doctor may prescribe pain relief medication or hormonal therapy for the management of endometriosis, but since this condition is progressive, many people require multiple and regular surgeries to remove the abnormal tissue growth.
Source: Medical News Today
No comments:
Post a Comment