Does a NuvaRing® user profile exists?
M. C. Landa, E. Gimenez,
R. Mora, J. M. Serrano, D. Alvarez, and I. Lete
Basque Contraception Society,
Basque Country, Spain
Background The availability of new methods and guidelines
on contraception field made us wonder whether there exists a specific user
profile for each method.
Objective To approach to women characteristics and
needs in order to adequate the contraceptive advice.
Methods A total of 945
women accepted to participate in this cross-sectional, descriptive, multicentre
study carried out at 17 public and private centres in the Basque Country between
September and December 2005. Women aged between 18 and 49 attending specific
contraception consultations were recruited after receiving advice about the
various combined hormonal methods and being offered the opportunity of using the
MCR. Furthermore all women were asked to answer a questionnaire about lifestyle
specifically design for that purpose that contained 50 questions. The duration
of the questionnaire was around 10 min, and could be answered either at the
doctor’s office or at women’s house.
Results From the total of women that
participated in the study, 471 agree to answer the questionnaire and 62% of them
accept to use MCR. We did not find significant differences in terms of
acceptability of the MCR and having a traditional or modern behaviour, healthy
and well-being cares (nutrition habits, exercise, smoking habit, image,
stressing work, importance of sexual life), leisure time (sports, trips), mass
media (paper press, radio or TV programs preferred) and home equipment
(internet, mobile). The only differences we found were: more acceptances in
higher study levels, tampon usage, knowing the
method before counselling trough friends, family and doctors.
Conclusions The
MCR can be accepted by a high percentage of women and it seems there is not a
definite user profile. Accordingly, it can be offered to any type of woman.