title: 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.
authors: Department of Physiology, S. S. Medical College, Rewa.
authors: Amita
authors: A
authors: Singh
authors: Dukhu
authors: D
authors: Kiran
authors: Harminder
authors: H
authors: Singh
authors: Bithika
authors: B
authors: Nel
authors: Prabhakar
authors: P
authors: Singh
authors: Pavan
authors: P
authors: Tiwari
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D015992:Body Mass Index; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004412:Dysmenorrhea / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015444:Exercise; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011293:Premenstrual Syndrome / Q000453:epidemiology; D015995:Prevalence; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013337:Students, Medical