AVF Pelvic Venous Disorders Summit: Patients and Policy

A Patient’s Journey Through Chronic Pelvic Pain

The inaugural summit opened with a patient describing years of dismissed symptoms before imaging finally revealed left renal vein compression and pelvic varices, framing the multidisciplinary goal of building consensus and evidence-based guidelines for pelvic venous disorders.

Sex Differences and Gaps in Women’s Health Research

A women’s health researcher showed that sex differences remain under-identified and under-treated across medicine, that women were largely excluded from research until 1993, and that pelvic venous disease is not on the NIH list of women’s chronic diseases.

Insurance Coverage Challenges for Pelvic Congestion Syndrome

An insurance medical director outlined how health plans set coverage criteria from proprietary guidelines like Milliman, why trial evidence is scarce for pelvic congestion syndrome, and unresolved questions on therapy duration, imaging requirements, and treatment sequencing.

Quantifying the Burden of Chronic Pelvic Pain

Chronic pelvic pain drives billions in healthcare costs and disproportionate visits for a small patient subset, prompting communication strategies for clinicians, before the session closed honoring Mel Rosenblatt’s contributions to pelvic venous disease and the SVP classification.