Women's Health

Experts: Common Women's Condition Needs a New Name

New Name ‘Not a New Idea’

Other experts say that’s easier said than done.

“This is not a new idea,” says Sarah Berga, MD, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. Berga has spent her career studying PCOS, and she says she tried to give it a new name about 20 years ago. “I changed it to hyperandrogenic anovulation,” she says. 

“We published one of our really most important papers under that name,” Berga says, hoping the change would catch on. The result? “No one knows it exists. You can’t search it.”

“What happens is that the name may not be everything you want it to be, but it’s how all of the world, unfortunately, thinks about it,” she says.

“To reeducate people is a huge task,” she says. “I love it. I agree with [a name change for PCOS]. But I wonder how really feasible it will be.”