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Young Swedish women's experience of pain and discomfort during sexual intercourse
Eva Elmerstig1, Barbro Wijma, Katarina Swahnberg
1Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Division of Gender and Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Linkoping University, Sweden. eva.elmerstig@liu.se
Objective:
To study experience and prevalence of (1) pain related to first sexual intercourse; (2) pain and/or discomfort associated with sexual intercourse during the previous month; and (3) associations between these experiences.
Design:
Cross-sectional study.
Setting:
A youth center in southeast Sweden.
Sample:
Three hundred consecutive women, aged 13-21 (response rate 98%).
Method:
During a two-month period, women consulting a youth center, participated in a questionnaire study.
Main Outcome Measures:
Pain and/or discomfort during sexual intercourse.
Results:
The majority of the participants, 98%, had had sexual intercourse and of those, 65% reported pain related to first sexual intercourse. Forty-nine percent (99/203) of those who reported sexual intercourse during the previous month had experienced coital pain and/or discomfort during that period, and for almost every second woman (46/99), those experiences constituted a problem. We found no association between experience of pain during first sexual intercourse and pain and/or discomfort during the previous month.
Conclusions:
Prevalence of pain and/or discomfort associated with sexual intercourse is high among women visiting a youth center. Our results show that coital pain in young women is a problem which needs to be further explored.
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