Uterine pain explanation from Iranian Traditional Medicine point of view and comparison with pelvic pain from contemporary medicine (review article)

Iranian Traditional Medicine (ITM) has holistic and systematic approach. From ITM point of view, uterine pain is a pelvic pain with gynecological basis. Many gynecological causes of pelvic pain are unknown in the contemporary medicine. Therefore, this study was performed with aim to survey the causes of unknown cases and evaluate the causes of uterine pain from ITM point of view and compared with contemporary medicine.
The current review study investigated the causes of uterine pain in ITM references from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries. Also, gynecological causes of pelvic pain were collected from gynecological textbooks and 16 articles from databases of Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus and SID with keywords of chronic pelvic pain and pelvic pain. Then, the causes of uterine pain from ITM point of view were compared with the gynecological causes of pelvic pain from the contemporary medicine.
Uterine pain from ITM’s view is divided into two groups of related and unrelated to specific time. Uterine pain related to specific time is related to menstruation, coitus and delivery. Causes of uterine pain unrelated to specific time include structural, functional and structural-functional causes. From contemporary medicine, pelvic pain is divided into acute, cyclic and chronic that each has different causes.
Uterine pain related to specific time from ITM's view is in accordance with cyclic pelvic pain from the contemporary medicine's view and uterine pain unrelated to specific time is in accordance with chronic pelvic pain with gynecological basis. The most important differences of gynecological causes of chronic pelvic pain between ITM and contemporary medicine are "genital dystemperaments" (Sui' e Mizaj) and "uterine distension" that are among the functional causes and can explain one of the most common and challengeable gynecological causes of chronic pelvic pain, the idiopathic causes, in the contemporary medicine.