Survey study, 1992
How should doctors diagnose premenstrual syndrome?
PMS diagnosis should include mood symptoms like irritability, anxiety, depression, or fatigue, along with a physical symptom like bloating or breast tenderness. Doctors need to ask women about symptoms every day for a full cycle, not rely on blood tests or personality assessments.
What they did
A review of how doctors and researchers have been diagnosing PMS and whether they are doing it correctly.
What they found
Fatigue is the most common PMS symptom. Diagnosis requires mood or behavioral symptoms (irritability with anxiety or depression, or fatigue) plus at least one physical symptom (bloating, breast tenderness, or headache). Symptom timing with the menstrual cycle must be established using prospective recording instruments like COPE. Personality factors, psychosocial stress, and biochemical markers have little utility in diagnosis. Many studies have been misinterpreted because they included women with other psychiatric disorders or used invalid symptom inventories.
What it means for you
To diagnose PMS correctly, doctors need to track symptoms day by day over time. The main limitation is that this is a review of existing research rather than new data from a study.
3
physical symptoms to consider (bloating, breast tenderness, headache)
About the study
- Original title
- Issues in the diagnosis and research of premenstrual syndrome
- Authors
- Mortola JF
- Journal
- Clinical obstetrics and gynecology
- Year
- 1992
- Study design
- Survey study
- What was tested
- None (literature review)
- Read the paper
- doi.org/10.1097/00003081-199209000-00019
Topics
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