GP Tests to Cut Endometriosis Diagnosis to 45 Minutes
Two new tests that can be carried out by GPs have been approved for NHS use, promising to cut the diagnosis of endometriosis from an average of nine years or more to as little as 45 minutes. The condition — in which tissue similar to the womb’s lining grows elsewhere in the body, causing severe pain — affects roughly one in ten women of reproductive age.
The near-decade diagnostic delay has been one of the starkest failures in women’s health — years of dismissed pain, repeated referrals and lost fertility windows for a condition affecting around 1.5 million women in the UK — so moving detection into a GP appointment is structural, not incremental. The tests’ value depends on what follows them: diagnosis without treatment capacity shifts the bottleneck rather than removing it, and gynaecology waiting lists are already among the NHS’s longest. Watch the rollout timetable, and whether surgical and specialist capacity is expanded to meet the demand that faster diagnosis will surface.