A recent study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical Center has found that parents underestimate the impact that pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) has on teens who have been infected with the sexually transmitted disease (STD). This condition occurs when the sexual organs are inflamed due to the effects of STDs such as chlamydia or gonorrhea.
Researchers asked girls with this disorder to rank how much it affected their lives from 0 to 100, with 0 meaning they believed the disease was threatening their lives and 100 meaning they felt healthy. Then scientists asked the teens’ parents to do fill out the same survey with their opinion of how much this STD has affected their child.
Study authors came to the conclusion that parents did not understand how deeply affected their child was by having PID. The average score that the girls gave was 62, while parents put an average of 75 for the same category.
“Teen girls often seek confidential care, assume full responsibility for their treatment and behavior and are expected to manage their own disease so it is their perceptions that should matter the most,” says study lead investigator Maria Trent, M.D., M.P.H.
Tags: Chlamydia, gonorrhea, pelvic inflammatory disease, PID, sexually transmitted disease, STD
