Contraceptive use patterns among 9394 women applying to a metropolitan FP center in Turkey

B. Dilbaz, E. Caliskan, M. Tugral, D. Yildirim, Y. Tasci, A. Haberal

Ministery of Health Ankara Etlik Maternity and Women's Health Teaching and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey

Objective To evaluate the contraceptive use pattern of 9394 women applying to a metropolitan FP center between 2000 and 2005

Design and methods Demographic variables and method of choice of all women applying to FP Center is recorded using a standart patient registration programme. The data is analyzed statistically.

Results The mean age of the patient group was 33.5 ±7.4 (R:17-50), the mean number of living children was 2.8±0.9 (R=0-5), 19.7% were nulliparous, and 2% had >5 deliveries. Almost 33 % did not experience voluntary termination of pregnancy while the rest had one or more termination and 77.6% had no spontaneous abortion. Whilst 6.9% were illiterate, 75% had primary school education. The most widely used method was IUD (54.4%) followed by withdrawal 29.9%. Oral contraceptive use was only 2.5% even lower than tubal ligation which is 4.1%. Overall hormonal method use was merely 5.4%. Monthly injections constituted 1.4% whilst implant use was 1.1%. Vasectomy was prefered in 0.3% of our population and condom use for contraception was almost nil. Of all, 57.5% wanted to have no more children, 17.6 % did not know whether they wanted to have more children, 17.3% were hesitant, whilst 4.6% wanted children within the next 2 years and 3% after 2 years. In spite of this high number of women who wanted to have no more children and the fact that 96.5 % wanted to have sterilization at one stage the rate of female and male sterilization was very low.

Conclusion The most widely used method was IUD in our patient group and traditional method use was still very high -the second most widely used method of contraception. Counselling should be strenghtened in order to increase the use of modern methods and women who do not have any more children should be counselled thoroughly about sterilization.