Young Swedish women's experience of pain and discomfort during sexual intercourse

OBJECTIVE: To study experience and prevalence of (1) pain related to first sexual intercourse; (2) pain and/or discomfort associated with sexual intercourse during the previous month; and (3) associations between these experiences. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: A youth center in southeast Sweden. SAMPLE: Three hundred consecutive women, aged 13-21 (response rate 98%). METHOD: During a two-month period, women consulting a youth center, participated in a questionnaire study. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Pain and/or discomfort during sexual intercourse. RESULTS: The majority of the participants, 98%, had had sexual intercourse and of those, 65% reported pain related to first sexual intercourse. Forty-nine percent (99/203) of those who reported sexual intercourse during the previous month had experienced coital pain and/or discomfort during that period, and for almost every second woman (46/99), those experiences constituted a problem. We found no association between experience of pain during first sexual intercourse and pain and/or discomfort during the previous month. CONCLUSIONS: Prevalence of pain and/or discomfort associated with sexual intercourse is high among women visiting a youth center. Our results show that coital pain in young women is a problem which needs to be further explored.