A Gynecologist Skipped the Stirrups, and a Study of 197 Women Found Exams Without Them Caused Less Discomfort

Wellness

By Sari Moon

Updated 3 minutes ago, October 24, 2026

A 2006 randomized trial in the BMJ found that pelvic exams done without stirrups caused less discomfort. Dean Seehusen and his team at Eisenhower Army Medical Center split 197 women into two groups, one with feet in metal stirrups and one with feet resting on the corners of the exam table.

Without stirrups, reported physical discomfort dropped from 30.4 to 17.2 on a 100-point scale, and the sense of vulnerability fell from 23.6 to 13.1, roughly 43% and 44% lower.

The quality of the Pap smears didn’t differ significantly. As the authors put it, “Once a woman’s feet are placed in stirrups, getting out is neither quick nor easy.”

The question surfaced again recently when a woman asked online why her new doctor skipped the stirrups. She said the doctor told her: “Because I think they are a device of the patriarchy. They are not actually necessary and they put women in a very precarious position.”

So why do American patients expect them at all? In an editorial published alongside the study, family physician Wendy Brooks Barr wrote that U.S. medical schools “uniformly teach a single way to position a woman for pelvic examinations, in the dorsal lithotomy position with feet in stirrups.” The exam was already standard practice without them across the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

The guidance has caught up. The American Academy of Family Physicians said women getting a routine pelvic exam “should be offered the option of not using stirrups.” A midwife who dropped them wrote in 2016 that stirrups “are technically unnecessary for exams: they make access easier for the provider.”

ACOG tells patients the exam “should not be painful” and that “you can ask to stop the exam at any time.” And since May 2024, the FDA has allowed self-collected HPV samples in a clinic for anyone who would rather skip the pelvic exam entirely.

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