The shifts in contraceptive choices
A. Atis1, M. Donmez Kesim1,
S. Ozdemir1, Y. Aydin1, G. Ozdemir1, G. Aki2, G. Tuncer1
1Sisli Etfal Training
and Research Hospital 3rd Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics, Sisli, Istanbul,
Turkey, and 2Family Planning
Training Center, Sisli, Istanbul, Turkey
Objectives Contraception choices affect the long term sexual health and
fertility of women and men. Both improvements in available contraceptive
technologics and changes in woman’s life situation with increasing age and
parity render them finding new solutions for problems in contraception.
Contraception choices are changed sometimes with the couples preferance, side
effects or usage problems occuring in usage period. We wanted to find out if the
first applied contraceptive method is the temporary or permanent method for the
couples.
Design and methods We included 9800 women in our study attending to
our hospital’s Family Planning Centre for contraception. The shifts in
contraceptive usage patterns over the 5-year study period were analyzed. Reasons
of the method change were not included in this study.
Results Totally 4.2 % of
all women changed their methods because of developing problems in the usage
period. Among intrauterine device (IUD) users , 4.3 % changed their methods with
3.4 % to condoms ,0.96 % to hormonal contraceptives. Among condom users 6.0 %
changed their method with 4.3 of it to IUD , with 1.7 of it to hormonal methods.
Among oral contraceptives users , 1.5 % of these returned to IUD’s. Among
injectable users, 6.3 % returned to oral contraceptives.
Conclusions Injectables
and condoms are the most changed methods of contraception depending to bleeding
problems in enjectables and usage problems in comdoms respectively , in our
group. With changing patient needs, problems may occur in the usage period
especially in the lack of good communication between clinicians and users.
Clinicians must tell all the side effects , user disadvantages to patients
clearly to prevent patient discomfort.