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What do patients want to know about contraception and which method would they prefer?

  • Gynecologic Endocrinology and Reproductive Medicine
  • Published:
Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which women’s choice of contraceptive method depends on the advice received from their gynecologist and whether more intensive counseling might lead to more frequent use of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC).

Methods

A total of 1089 physicians and 18,521 women responded to 32 or 37 questions, respectively, using an online questionnaire. The women were asked about their current use of contraceptive methods, the extent of their satisfaction with them, their satisfaction with the counseling they had received, and whether they wanted to have more information about contraception. The physicians were similarly asked which contraceptive methods were being used, how satisfied with them they were, how they would assess their patients’ satisfaction with them, and whether the women wanted to have more information.

Result

The results showed that 61% of the women were using oral contraceptives, and a total of only 9% were using behavior-independent long-term contraceptive methods. However, 60% of the women stated that long-term contraception would be an option for them if they had more information about it. Gynecologists underestimated this figure, at only 18%. Whereas 66% of the gynecologists believed that their patients never forgot to take the pill, nearly, half of the women stated that they had forgotten it at least once during the previous 3 months.

Conclusion

The small number of women who use long-term contraception is in clear contrast to the fact that many women want to have a very safe but also behavior-independent method.

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported by Jenapharm GmbH, Germany.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

PGO: project development, data collection, and manuscript writing; FB, CF, KH, TH, and CB: data collection and manuscript editing; RD: supervision, manuscript writing, and editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ralf Dittrich.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Oppelt, P.G., Baier, F., Fahlbusch, C. et al. What do patients want to know about contraception and which method would they prefer?. Arch Gynecol Obstet 295, 1483–1491 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-017-4373-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-017-4373-1

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