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Persistent pelvic pain

The pelvis (or lower abdomen) is the area below your belly button and between your hips. It’s where your bowel, bladder, ovaries, uterus (womb) and fallopian tubes are. In your pelvis, there are also muscles and joints, such as your pelvic floor muscles, abdominal wall and muscles around your hips, bottom and back.

Pelvic pain is quite common. It can be short term (acute), lasting from a few days to a few weeks, or it can become persistent (chronic).

Persistent pelvic pain (PPP) is pain in your pelvis that is felt most days and lasts for more than six months. This type of pain is complex and can be influenced by many things, including:

If you have pelvic pain, it’s important to see your doctor. It can take some time to diagnose persistent pelvic pain. It might also take time to learn how to manage it.

Learn more about persistent pelvic pain, including how it develops, where you can get help, and what you can do to manage your pain.

What is persistent pelvic pain?

Per­sis­tent (chron­ic) pelvic pain (PPP) is pain in your pelvis or low­er abdomen – the area below your bel­ly but­ton and between your hips. Per­sis­tent pelvic pain is felt most days and lasts for more than six months. It affects about 15% to 25% of women. It may be even more com­mon in young women. Some­times the pain is a symp­tom of oth­er con­di­tions, but it can also become a con­di­tion of its own.

What contributes to persistent pelvic pain?

Per­sis­tent (chron­ic) pelvic pain (PPP) is a com­plex con­di­tion. Many things may con­tribute to this type of pain, includ­ing: bio­log­i­cal fac­tors (e.g. phys­i­cal health con­di­tions, inflam­ma­tion and hormones)psychological fac­tors (e.g. how you think about pain and how pain impacts your sleep and mood)social fac­tors (e.g. rela­tion­ships, social con­nec­tions and work envi­ron­ments). It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that your pain is real, no mat­ter what is caus­ing it.

Getting help for persistent pelvic pain

Some peo­ple find their pain gets bet­ter with­out treat­ment. Oth­ers need to work at reduc­ing their pain over time. Every­one is dif­fer­ent and there is no ​‘one way’ to man­age per­sis­tent (chron­ic) pelvic pain (PPP). It’s a com­plex process to diag­nose per­sis­tent pelvic pain. Depend­ing on your symp­toms, your doc­tor may refer you to dif­fer­ent health­care pro­fes­sion­als (e.g. gynae­col­o­gist, pain spe­cial­ist, phys­io­ther­a­pist, psy­chol­o­gist). If oth­er obvi­ous caus­es of pain are not found, your health­care team may diag­nose chron­ic pelvic pain syn­drome. This process can take time.

Learn about pain

It’s impor­tant for you to learn about per­sis­tent (chron­ic) pelvic pain (PPP) and dif­fer­ent strate­gies that may help you. Research sug­gests that learn­ing about pain can lead to a grad­ual reduc­tion in pain. It can help you under­stand your pain and find ways to man­age it better.

Managing persistent pelvic pain

There are many things you can do to man­age your per­sis­tent (chron­ic) pelvic pain. In addi­tion to your treat­ment plan, you can try prac­ti­cal strategies.

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This con­tent has been reviewed by a group of med­ical sub­ject mat­ter experts, in accor­dance with Jean Hailes pol­i­cy.

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