Women with heavy menstrual bleeding may be missing out on testing for mild bleeding disorders, if results of an audit at one hospital typify Australian practice.

Gynaecologists from Melbourne’s Mercy Hospital for Women examined their data for the period 2009-13, to see how frequently women with the complaint were given coagulation tests.

A three-month snapshot of consultations during this period revealed that 12% of women attending the hospital’s gynaecology outpatient clinics had heavy menstrual bleeding.

With nearly 1600 women attending the clinics annually they estimated that 190 women a year would have the problem, they wrote in a letter to Haemophilia.