Although menopause is a common milestone that affects roughly half of the population, it reminds extremely under documented in medical records. Authors of this article, University of Colorado Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics Audrey Hendricks and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Nanette Santoro, analyzed electronic medical records of almost 240,000 women and found that only 12% included mentions of menopause even though half of them were experiencing it. Hendricks and Santoro explain that this data gap hinders clinical care and research that could advance women’s health.
As someone who works with electronic medical records, I can tell you that sometimes things are known about a patient that aren’t listed under diagnoses. It says menopause “diagnoses” listed explicitly in this study so I can only assume that’s what they mean. For example, almost all allergies aren’t listed as diagnoses because they are in a separate area of the chart. Also, for something like breastfeeding, this is often not charted under a diagnosis because it is listed in a separate area of the chart. These are just a few examples. I have seen a lot of clinic notes that mention menopause but it never explicitly gets entered as a diagnosis. I would take this with a grain of salt, this might not be doctors completely ignoring menopause to the degree that is listed. That’s not to say that menopause isn’t sometimes brushed over as well of course.
I feel like menopause or perimenopause onset is "blamed" for a lot of stuff when a doctor doesn't know or want to figure out the real answer.
I'm thinking in particular of my MIL's doctor in Birmingham England who blamed menopause for her bladder troubles when actually she had a UTI the entire time and it took my husband going in with her to get the doctor to even run a test. We were ready to bring her to our house for a doctor visit if they hadn't finally run that $5 test. We were livid.
Your MIL's doctor is baffling... menopause in fact does come with a greater risk of UTIs, so if he thought that was the case, he should have treated the health issue he was apparently aware of.
Meanwhile, half the r/menopause sub can't get their doctors to agree perimenopause is a real thing and seem to think women of a certain age just go crazy and start inventing mystery symptoms for attention. And a lot of those ladies had to take their husbands with them to talk sadly about the loss of libido in their wives, to get on HRT.
[OP] The_Conversation | a day ago
Although menopause is a common milestone that affects roughly half of the population, it reminds extremely under documented in medical records. Authors of this article, University of Colorado Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics Audrey Hendricks and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Nanette Santoro, analyzed electronic medical records of almost 240,000 women and found that only 12% included mentions of menopause even though half of them were experiencing it. Hendricks and Santoro explain that this data gap hinders clinical care and research that could advance women’s health.
KennyMcCormick | a day ago
As someone who works with electronic medical records, I can tell you that sometimes things are known about a patient that aren’t listed under diagnoses. It says menopause “diagnoses” listed explicitly in this study so I can only assume that’s what they mean. For example, almost all allergies aren’t listed as diagnoses because they are in a separate area of the chart. Also, for something like breastfeeding, this is often not charted under a diagnosis because it is listed in a separate area of the chart. These are just a few examples. I have seen a lot of clinic notes that mention menopause but it never explicitly gets entered as a diagnosis. I would take this with a grain of salt, this might not be doctors completely ignoring menopause to the degree that is listed. That’s not to say that menopause isn’t sometimes brushed over as well of course.
abielle1177 | a day ago
I feel like menopause or perimenopause onset is "blamed" for a lot of stuff when a doctor doesn't know or want to figure out the real answer.
I'm thinking in particular of my MIL's doctor in Birmingham England who blamed menopause for her bladder troubles when actually she had a UTI the entire time and it took my husband going in with her to get the doctor to even run a test. We were ready to bring her to our house for a doctor visit if they hadn't finally run that $5 test. We were livid.
city17_dweller | 15 hours ago
Your MIL's doctor is baffling... menopause in fact does come with a greater risk of UTIs, so if he thought that was the case, he should have treated the health issue he was apparently aware of.
Meanwhile, half the r/menopause sub can't get their doctors to agree perimenopause is a real thing and seem to think women of a certain age just go crazy and start inventing mystery symptoms for attention. And a lot of those ladies had to take their husbands with them to talk sadly about the loss of libido in their wives, to get on HRT.