Professor Daniel Matzer

Yeah, so this was a national women's health survey.

And what we asked was for those women who had had an IUD in the past or currently had an IUD in place, what level of pain they felt they experienced at the time of insertion.

And we found the findings very interesting because this has been such a big issue highlighted by so many women and the media around what perceived pain is with insertion.

So we found that about 50% of women said that they experienced no pain or mild pain.

And this was, I think, a very interesting finding.

Only 19% said no.

that they experienced severe pain when they had their IUD inserted.

And I think this is contrary to what women are looking at when they're looking at their social media feeds that are telling them that all IUD insertions are very painful.

We asked them what their perceived knowledge was about IUDs.

And interestingly, the women who felt they knew more about IUDs actually reported more pain.

So we call this the knowledge paradox because you would think that if you understood more about IUDs and what was happening with insertion, that you might be more relaxed about it and not feel so much pain, but actually the contrary is true.

And this might be reflecting the negative information or the fear-inducing stories that they're seeing on social media that are actually making them feel more anxious and experience more pain.

I suppose it could, but we weren't able to really tease that out with this survey.

Lots of things can impact it.

Personal characteristics of the person who's experiencing the pain, their

their age, their previous experience of pain, their resilience, whether they've had enough sleep, what else is happening in their lives, past trauma, lots of things like that.

And then there's a whole lot of health system issues that can affect pain, familiarity with the setting, confidence in the provider.

understanding of what's going to take place, whether or not the person feels that they're in control.

Yeah, it's quite a complex issue.

Pain might be one factor and fear of what they'll experience with insertion.