Prevalence and severity of dysmenorrhea: a problem related to menstruation, among first and second year female medical students

Abstract

Dysmenorrhea is the most common of gynecologic complaints. It affects half of all female adolescents today and represents the leading cause of periodic college/school absenteeism among that population. To evaluate the menstrual problem specially dysmenorrhea and its severity in female medical students and its effect on their regular activities. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study; conducted on 107 female medical students, all participants were given a questionnaire to complete; questions were related to menstruation elucidating variations in menstrual patterns, history of dysmenorrhea and its severity, pre-menstrual symptom and absenteeism from college and/or class; to detect the severity of dysmenorrhea we used the verbal multi-dimensional scoring system, participants were given 20 minutes to complete the questionnaire. The mean age of subjects at menarche was 12.5 (+/-1.52) years, with a range of 10-15 years. The prevalence of dysmenorrhea was 73.83%; approximately 4.67% of dysmenorrhic subjects had severe dysmenorrhea. The average duration between two periods and the duration of menstrual flow were 28.34 (+/-7.54) days and 4.5 (+/-2.45) days respectively. Prevalence of other menstrual disorders like irregularity, prolonged menstrual bleeding, heavy menstrual bleeding and PCOD were 7.47%, 10.28%, 23.36% and 3.73% respectively. Among female medical students who reported dysmenorrhea; 31.67% and 8.68% were frequently missing college & classes respectively. Premenstrual symptom was the second most (60.50%) prevalent disorder and 67.08% reported social withdrawal. Dysmenorrhea and PMS is highly prevalent among female medical students, it is related to college/class absenteeism, limitations on social, academic, sports and daily activities. Maximum participants do not seek medical advice and self treat themselves with prostaglandin inhibitors; like Ibuprofen.