The Need to Improve the Diagnosis and Management of Endometriosis

That the Parliament considers endometriosis to be a serious chronic disease with a significant impact on the quality of life of those who have it; understands that it is a health condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus (endometrium) grows in other parts of the body, causing potentially debilitating pain; considers that its burden has been exacerbated by the historic neglect of women’s healthcare, leading to a lack of research, as a result of which the relatively invasive procedure of laparoscopic surgery remains the only definitive method of diagnosis; notes that traditional non-invasive diagnostic tools, such as blood tests, ultrasounds and MRIs, can be useful but have limited diagnostic capacity as they do not always detect the disease, particularly in less infiltrative cases; understands that, despite affecting approximately 10% of women of reproductive age globally, endometriosis takes, on average, seven to 10 years from symptom onset to be diagnosed; considers that this delay in diagnosis is contributed to by the societal dismissal of women’s menstrual pain, even when severe, as “normal”, and treatment therefore often being the routine management of symptoms, including through the prescription of hormonal contraception, without adequate investigation; commends the development of non-invasive diagnostic tools such as the Ziwig Endotest, which analyses microRNAs in a saliva sample to screen for endometriosis with a diagnostic accuracy of over 95%; urges NHS Scotland to support the widespread implementation of such tools in public healthcare, and calls on the Scottish Government to appropriately prioritise and fund further research into understanding, diagnosing, treating and ultimately curing endometriosis, given that it is the second most common gynaecological condition in the UK.