ABSTRACT
According to the most recent definition of the International Society for the Study of Vulvovaginal Disease (ISSVD), vulvar pain syndrome consists of “vulvar discomfort, most often described as burning pain, occurring in the absence of relevant visible findings or a specific, clinically identifiable, neurologic disorder” (1). A recent population-based study suggests that the lifetime cumulative incidence of vulvar pain syndrome is 16%, indicating that approximately 14 million women in the United States alone may experience idiopathic vulvar pain during their lifetime (2). Relatively unknown until recently, vulvar pain syndrome is a pain syndrome that is gaining more attention from Western governments, scientists, and health care professionals, as exemplified by a recent conference on vulvar pain syndrome held at the National Institutes of Health (3) in the United States in 2003.
