Pelvic Inflammatory Disease

Abstract

Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) is defined as an infection of the upper genital tract in women. Because of the difficulty of diagnosis and the potential for damage to the reproductive health of women, the Center for Disease Control now defines PID as pelvic or lower abdominal pain in sexually active young women and other women at risk of sexually transmitted infections, if no cause for the illness other than PID can be identified, and if either cervical motion tenderness (CMT), uterine tenderness, or adnexal tenderness is present. PID is treated on an empiric basis because a definitive diagnosis is rare and confirmatory tests are rarely known at diagnosis. Treatment should not be delayed because prevention of long-term sequelae due to this ascending infection is dependent on early administration of appropriate antibiotics. Long-term sequelae include Fitz-Hugh-Curtis syndrome, tubo-ovarian abscess, infertility, ectopic pregnancy, and chronic pelvic pain, all of which result from inflammatory damage to pelvic organs. Screening and treating sexually active women for N. gonorrhoeae and C. trachomatis reduces the risk for developing PID.KeywordsFallopian TubeEctopic PregnancyBacterial VaginosisChlamydia TrachomatisPelvic Inflammatory DiseaseThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.