Prevalence is simply how common a certain disease or disorder is in a population at a given time.
In the 1990s, the National Institutes of Health followed 27,342 women aged 50-79, who had been through menopause over several years and tracked how many of them reported a pelvic floor disorder. Of those women who still had a uterus, 41.1 percent had some form of prolapse. Thirty eight percent of the women who no longer had a uterus reported a form of prolapse [1].
More recently, it is estimated that over one third of U.S. women have a pelvic floor disorder, with close to one fourth reporting more than one. In 2010 alone, around 377,000 women had a surgery for a bladder control problem [2].
Since so many women are affected by this problem, why don’t we hear more about it? Many think this is because most women find these disorders embarrassing and don’t want to talk about them, even to their doctors. Many women may not even know what pelvic floor disorders are or how to even discuss them with their physician. That's where we come in! We want to help you learn about PFDs and how to speak to your doctor about them.
- Hendrix, S. L., Clark, A., Nygaard, I., Aragaki, A., Barnabei, V., & McTiernan, A. (2002). Pelvic organ prolapse in the Women's Health Initiative: Gravity and gravidity. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 186, 1160-1166.
- National Institutes of Health. (2013, October 21). How many women have pelvic floor disorders? Retrieved August 10, 2015, from http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/pelvicfloor/conditioninfo/pages/risk.aspx
