Posted on by Portagyn2017

Recognizing the Need for Portable Lightweight Pelvic Exam Device

The pelvic exam is a procedure used by medical practitioners to assess the organs of the female reproductive systems for abnormalities and disease. Pelvic exams can typically be conducted for the following medical issues: maternal health services, female organ cancer screening, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual assault, abdominal pain, contraception prescriptions/devices, and cosmetic procedures. 1

Medicine has established the necessity of pelvic examinations for female and maternal health. Medical practitioners routinely perform pelvic exams in females of all ages in various clinical settings. However, the available necessary equipment to conduct the exam is often either limited or non-existent, resulting in makeshift exam tables . These makeshift exam tables force the female patient to wait, delays care, and creates discomfort to the patient during the clinical exam process. 2

The significance and impact of this healthcare delivery problem is of epic proportion. Why? Because based upon the last known published population data, there are 157,119,912 females in the United States; each of them will require female and maternal health services at some point in their lives. Each year, this impacts 64,756,078 women aged 14-44 in the United States alone (US Census Bureau, 2014).3

The most common denominator in these medical services is the pelvic exam. Approximately 55% of women receive pelvic exams each year.4 (Martinez et al., 2013).  Unfortunately, based upon known data there is a shortage of standard pelvic equipment and no lightweight mobile pelvic examination devices, causing unnecessary barriers and delays in female patient care in all clinical settings.5 The next post in this series, “Understanding the costly impact to clinical settings” will highlight the consequences and costs the lack of pelvic exam equipment has in healthcare settings.

  1. Bates, C.K., Carroll, N., Potter, J. (2011). The Challenging Pelvic Examination. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 26, 6, pp: 651-657, Doi: 10.1007/s11606-010-1610-8.
  2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099609
  3. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/contents2013.htm#001
  4. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/contents2013.htm#089
  5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099609