Epidemiology of Endometriosis in Spain and Its Autonomous Communities: A Large, Nationwide Study

A retrospective population-based study aimed to assess the incidence of endometriosis in the general population in Spain and in each of its autonomous communities. The authors used the incidence of diagnosed endometriosis in the minimum basic dataset at discharge in the national hospital discharge registry of Spain. This analysis was carried out with hospital data with a diagnosis of endometriosis (International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-9 code 617.xx and ICD-10 code N80.xx) and covered the period from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2017 and a population of 12,775,911 women of reproductive age (15-54 years). The data were then analyzed at the national level and separately for each autonomous community. This nationwide Spanish study estimated the overall incidence of endometriosis among autonomous communities in Spain to be 16.1 per 10,000 women (range, 6.8 to 24). The mean age of the 20,547 women diagnosed with endometriosis during the study period was 36.8 ± 5.4 years. The types (proportions) of endometriosis were uterine (28.4%), tubo-ovarian (35.2%), peritoneal (8.1%), vesical (6.8%) and intestinal (3.2%) endometriosis. Further studies are needed to assess the reasons for the decrease in the observed incidence and for the significant differences in the regional incidence rates of this disease.