About Us

What is Living with Chronic Pelvic Pain Patient Community?

LivingwithChronicPelvicPain.org is a dedicated patient-to-patient support community for patients and families affected by Chronic Pelvic Pain. LivingwithChronicPelvicPain.org is powered by BensFriends.org, a group of patient support communities for rare diseases, and is run by volunteer moderators who have been affected with Chronic Pelvic Pain.

Who can join LivingwithChronicPelvicPain.org?

If you or your family has been affected by CPP, consider LivingwithChronicPelvicPain.org your second home. LivingwithChronicPelvicPain.org, as well as the rest of BensFriends.org’s patient communities, is free for members to join.

What is Chronic Pelvic Pain?

Chronic Pelvic Pain (CPP) is a disabling disease that causes distress as the quality of life of CPP patients is vastly diminished. In addition, CPP is a public health crisis and is a burden on healthcare expenditure. In the United States, the annual costs for the diagnosis and treatment of CPP are 2.8 billion US . Moreover, to the indirect cost resulting from the absence from work and CPP associated family problems add 550 million US more making the economic burden more than 3.4 billion US $ (Mathias et al., 1996). Yet, the diagnosis of CPP is usually complicated as there are no gold standard guidelines that clearly define this syndrome. Although we have a limited understanding of its etiology, CPP has been found to be correlated with central sensitization, painful bladder syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, endometriosis and adhesions. As such, in the evaluation of patients, it is imperative to take a comprehensive patient history. Performing physical examinations and ultrasound imaging is of particular value to elucidate the etiology of pain. As CPP patients are at risk for psychological disorders, psychological assessments are critical to diagnose associated psychological disorders and to take these into account in planning a treatment plan for patients. By such evaluation techniques, medical professionals can provide better diagnostic service and patient care to people with CPP.

What is BensFriends.org?

In 2007, Ben Muñoz suffered a rare form of stroke caused by an Arterio-Veinous Malformation (AVM). He was unable to find the support he needed during the most difficult time, so he created an online support community AVMSurvivors.org to connect with others like him. AVMSurvivors.org led to the founding of BensFriends.org, driven to provide patient-to-patient support communities for people living with rare diseases.

BensFriends.org is a network of patient communities for people living with rare diseases. Launched in November 2007, Bens Friends provides valuable patient support by creating and running compassionate, responsive communities. BensFriends.org maintains dozens of patient communities and has changed thousands of lives. Bens Friends is supported by donations from its principals and community.

You can learn more about BensFriends.org at http://www.bensfriends.org or watch one of our videos at http://www.youtube.com/BensFriendsVideos.