Occupational Performance of Women with Chronic Pelvic Pain and the Potential of Coping as an Unassisted Intervention

Objective: To assess the satisfaction and occupational performance of women with chronic pelvic pain and to discuss unassisted intervention strategies by the occupational therapist for the care of these patients. Methods: A case-control study was conducted on 75 women with chronic pelvic pain and 75 apparently healthy women. The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the institution and all subjects gave written informed consent to participate. Pain intensity was determined using a visual analogue scale and each patient was submitted to psycho-metric assessment using the Patient Health Questionnaire, the Self-Reporting Questionnaire of Psychiatric Screening and the Tampa Scale of Kinesiophofobia in their Brazilian version. The main outcomes regarding occupational performance and satisfaction were evaluated using the Canadian Measure of Occupational Performance. Results: The performance and satisfaction scores of women with chronic pelvic pain were significantly lower than those of healthy women. The presence of pain and kinesophobia was directly and independently correlated with low performance and satisfaction scores regardless of ethnicity, marital status, schooling, or psychometric scores. Conclusion: women with chronic pelvic pain present significant impairment of satisfaction and occupational performance. Coping is a potential unassisted intervention strategy to be applied to this population by occupational therapists.