Annual Reviews Could Change How PCOS Is Managed in Routine Care
For women living with PCOS, the case for regular follow-up is not abstract. It is tied to missed lectures, years of symptoms, repeated appointments, and the shock of hearing a diagnosis that often arrives with more fear than explanation.
Neelam Heera-Shergill was 18 when she was told she had the condition. The diagnosis immediately raised a blunt question in her mind: whether she would ever become a mother. In the years that followed, she experienced irregular and painful periods, thinning hair, weight gain and exhaustion. Those symptoms were severe enough to disrupt university attendance and force her to resit exams, yet the care she received offered little clarity about what the condition meant beyond advice to exercise more and lose weight.
That pattern is familiar to many women with PCOS: symptoms that affect multiple body systems, but a clinical experience that can feel reduced to a single conversation about body weight.
Heera-Shergill later founded the Birmingham-based charity Cysters to address gaps in menstrual, maternal and menopausal health support. Her experience helps explain why the recent recommendation for annual health checks matters so much to patients, even when a name change alone cannot fix fragmented care.
Why the Move From PCOS to PMOS Matters Clinically
Earlier this year, supporters of the name change argued that polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS, better reflects the condition’s wider biology. The NHS describes PMOS as a health condition that can affect hair growth, periods, fertility and mood. The new terminology is intended to shift attention away from a narrow ovarian frame and toward the endocrine and metabolic disruption that sits at the centre of the disorder.
That broader framing is clinically important. Dr Rima Smith of Birmingham Women’s Hospital described PMOS as a “multi-organ, lifelong whole-body condition,” and said the older name never captured its complexity. In practical terms, that means the syndrome is not just about reproductive symptoms. It can overlap with cardiometabolic risk, menstrual disturbance, and endocrine dysfunction, all of which may evolve over time even when a woman’s weight remains in a healthy range.
One sentence captures the problem plainly: a diagnosis delivered once, without structured follow-up, is not enough for a chronic multisystem disorder.
For patients, the name change may also shape how symptoms are discussed in primary care. Heera-Shergill said the word PCOS itself was poorly understood, and she expects PMOS to face the same problem at first. Still, she supports any change that brings the condition into more open conversations, especially if it pushes clinicians to think beyond the old shorthand.
Women Describe Years of Being Dismissed Before Diagnosis
Rochelle Lewis, from Wolverhampton, waited years for an answer. She had long dealt with facial hair growth, painful periods and anxiety, and the facial hair in particular became a source of bullying. She first heard the words PCOS as a teenager when a family friend suggested it might explain her symptoms. When she brought the concern to doctors, she felt it was brushed aside.
Lewis was finally diagnosed in 2025. By then, the experience had left her frustrated and emotionally drained. The delay was not just about waiting for a label; it meant living through a period of persistent symptoms without a plan for monitoring or treatment escalation. Now a mother to a seven-month-old son, she says too many women receive a diagnosis and are left to manage the condition on their own.
Her account points to a familiar gap in chronic care: diagnosis is treated as an endpoint when, for PMOS, it should be the start of structured surveillance.
NICE Wants Annual Reviews to Track More Than Reproductive Symptoms
In July, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published draft guidance recommending an annual review for women with PMOS. The aim is to monitor symptoms, treatment and longer-term health risks, while improving consistency of care and supporting earlier diagnosis and management. The final guideline is due to be published on 27 January.
Marie Anne Ledingham, a consultant clinical adviser for women’s and reproductive health at NICE, called a simple annual review an important step toward ongoing care and monitoring. The value of that approach is straightforward: symptoms and treatment response can shift over time, and metabolic or endocrine complications may emerge gradually rather than all at once.
Dr Smith said annual checks could include diabetes, thyroid and menstrual function assessments, along with a review of whether treatment is working. That is consistent with the biology of the condition. If PMOS is a cardiometabolic disorder as well as a reproductive one, then care has to look for evolving metabolic risk, endocrine imbalance and persistent symptom burden, not only for visible menstrual changes.
Whole-Body Care Fits the Way PMOS Presents in Real Life
The annual review model also addresses a problem patients described repeatedly: fragmented services. Women may see one clinician for menstrual issues, another for fertility questions, and still another for mood or metabolic concerns, without a single coordinated plan tying those threads together.
Lewis said annual review would have made a real difference, because missed symptoms could have been picked up earlier. Heera-Shergill agreed, but with a condition attached: the review must examine the wider picture of what PMOS is doing, rather than defaulting to repeated advice about weight loss or oral contraception alone. Her point echoes the experience of many patients whose symptoms are real even when they do not fit a simplistic script.
A routine review cannot reverse years of dismissal. It can, however, create a structure where fatigue, irregular bleeding, hirsutism, mood symptoms and metabolic risk are considered together instead of in isolation.
The Remaining Challenge Is Making Follow-Up Feel Real to Patients
Both women support the annual check-up recommendation, but neither treats the name change as a cure-all. The concern now is implementation: whether clinics will use annual reviews to gather a fuller clinical picture, or whether the encounter will become another brief visit that repeats old advice without meaningful assessment.
For PMOS, the stakes are long term. Symptoms can affect education, fertility planning, emotional health and day-to-day functioning for years. A diagnosis that once arrived with fear and confusion now has an opportunity to be paired with consistent monitoring, earlier recognition of complications and better continuity of care. The unanswered question is not whether the syndrome deserves follow-up. It is whether the health system will deliver that follow-up in a way patients can actually feel.