Age incidence of dysmenorrhoea.

Since dysmenorrhoea refers to an ill-defined group of symptoms, it is not surprising that estimates of its incidence in women of child-bearing age range from 3 to 90 per cent. Most women experience some abdominal discomfort either immediately before or during menstruation, and the degree of discomfort called dysmenorrhoea will depend upon the individual patient's tolerance of pain, the nature of the population examined, and the investigator's criteria and interests. If dysmenorrhoea is defined as a degree of menstrual pain sufficient to interfere with a woman's normal mode of life, estimates of incidence range from about 3 to 17 per cent. Most of these estimates are the result of questioning university students (Bell and Parsons, 1931; Cunningham, 1934), hospital patients (Emge, 1933; Bertling, 1948), hospital nurses (Larkin, 1941), or high-school girls (Goldwasser, 1938), and are by no means representative of the general female population. Several investigations have been concerned with industrial workers (Ewing, 1931; Lakeman, 1933), but no attempt appears to have been made to relate incidence to age or to marital status.