Women's attitudes towards heavy menstrual bleeding, and their impact on quality of life

Johannes Bitzer,¹ Marco Serrani,² Annalena Lahav<sup>2

1</sup>Universitats-Frauenspital Basel, Basel, Switzerland; ²Bayer HealthCare AG, Berlin, Germany

Abstract: The aim of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of women's current knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs around heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB) and gain a further understanding of how HMB affects women's lives, while identifying current misconceptions and gaps in the knowledge. A total of 6179 women, 18–55 years old, currently using, or open to using, hormonal contraception at the time of the study, were recruited from 15 countries. All participants completed a 52 question online survey designed to assess the impact of HMB on quality of life, as well as current levels of awareness and knowledge of this condition. Of the women who perceived themselves as having above average menstrual flow, a significantly greater proportion identified their menstrual bleeding as problematic compared to those women who perceived themselves as having below average menstrual flow. Further questioning indicated that the impact of diagnosed or perceived HMB stretched across multiple aspects of women's lives, including social life, relationships, and work, with significantly greater proportions of women reporting negative effects in these domains in the above average menstrual flow subgroup relative to the below average menstrual flow subgroup (P < 0.05). In addition, awareness and understanding of HMB within the survey population were found to be poor, with 48% of participants claiming that they were "not at all" or "not very" knowledgeable regarding HMB and 39% of those diagnosed with the condition believed that no treatment was available to them. This study confirms previous findings indicating that HMB has a profound negative effect on many aspects of women's lives and shows that, despite its common occurrence, gaps in women's current knowledge and understanding of HMB remain.

Keywords: menorrhagia, quality of life, (QoL), menstrual flow