Is the Menopause Rating Scale accurate for diagnosing sexual dysfunction among climacteric women?

Background: Although several tools have been designed to assess quality of life (QoL) among middle-aged women their capacity to specifically assess sexual dysfunction (SD) remains uncertain. Moreover, if SD impairs QoL within this population, then sexual assessment becomes a key issue. Objectives: To evaluate the accuracy of the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS) in diagnosing SD among climacteric women. Methods: In this cross-sectional study 370 women aged 40-59 years filled out the MRS and the Female Sexual Functioning Index (FSFI) simultaneously. SD among surveyed women was defined as those obtaining a total FSFI score of ≤26.55. A receiver-operator curve (ROC) was used to plot and measure the diagnostic accuracy of one MRS item (item 8, assessing sexual problems) using the FSFI total score as a gold standard. Results: Mean age of surveyed women was 49.3 ± 5.8 years. A 56.5% of them were married, 44.3% were postmenopausal, 66.8% were sexually active and 57% had SD (FSFI total score ≤26.55). ROC curve determined a score ≥1 in the MRS item 8 as a cut-off value for discriminating women with SD (78% sensitivity and 62% specificity with an area below the curve of 0.70 Swett). Conclusions: The MRS was moderately accurate for diagnosing SD among climacteric women. More research is warranted in this regard.