Laura Sweet was an active, upbeat 42-year-old saleswoman living in Santa Monica, Calif., when the agony first started — debilitating, flaring pains in her pelvis that lasted for days and recurred periodically. The discomfort resulted in many visits to the emergency room, referrals to various specialists, wrong diagnoses and a daily cocktail of painkillers.

Her once-sunny disposition turned morose, and her vigorous workouts declined to a measly 20 minutes of walking a day. When one doctor’s tests revealed no explanation, Ms. Sweet said, he told her she had “chronic pelvic pain and I should learn to live with it.”

Her sorry tale could be repeated by countless women who, like Ms. Sweet, had hidden abdominal hernias, a condition that most doctors — including gynecologists and surgeons — rarely consider or know how to find.

Unlike hernias in men, which are far more common, those that afflict women are usually small and internal and rarely cause an obvious bulge. Symptoms can be suggestive of other problems — ovarian cysts, fibroids, endometriosis or adhesions from a previous operation — but surgically correcting these conditions does not relieve the devastating pain.