Going beyond the surface: a mixed-method exploration of infertility-related quality of life of women with endometriosis

ABSTRACT

Literature about the impact of infertility and endometriosis on Quality of Life (QoL) is scarce and needs further investigation. Our aim was to deeply investigate the QoL of women with diagnoses of both endometriosis and infertility with failed Assisted Reproductive Treatments (ART). We conducted a concurrent mixed-method study composed of both quantitative and qualitative surveys. The quantitative survey included 22 women who completed the FertiQoL. The qualitative survey included 15 of them who provided written answers to open-ended questions aimed at deeply exploring their QoL. Data were initially analyzed separately and then combined in a meta-matrix. From the quantitative survey emerged that women at higher risk for low QoL were those who have experienced previous spontaneous miscarriages and that the domains of the FertiQoL related to fertility treatment (i.e. increased pain severity, disturbed daily life routine, and dissatisfaction with services) were the most critical. From the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of qualitative survey, narrations about the physical, relational, social, emotional-cognitive, and behavioural impact of the diseases emerged. Mixed findings showed that the QoL of this population was scarce and that different levels (the inner world, the behaviours, the relational context, and the environmental context) are strictly connected and interact between them in influencing QoL. Multi-level preventive or supportive programs (with specific attention to pain experience, coping strategies, quality of services and governmental support) are required for this population.

KEYWORDS:

• Infertility
• endometriosis
• quality of life
• assisted reproductive treatment
• mixed-method

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Compliance with ethical standards

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were following the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. The local Ethical Committee approved the study.

Data availability statement

Data will be available upon request sent to the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.