Prevalence of primary dysmenorrhea and its association with the quality of life among medical students in USM
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Date
2013
Authors
Emmanuel Joseph, Sebastian Thevaraja
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Dysmenorrhea is a significant contributor of menstrual morbidity among females in their adolescents and early adulthood period. Its adverse consequences could affect their quality of life. A cross sectional study was conducted at the Medical faculty of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Kelantan during the study period of 10 September 2012 till 10 May 2013. The general objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of dysmenorrhea and its effect on the health related quality of life (HRQoL) among USM female medical students. Simple random sampling was used for the selection of 188 female Medical students in Year One and Year Two from the students name list that fitted the exclusion and inclusion criteria. Out of the questionnaires distributed, 172 students returned them meaning a response rate of 91.5%. The overall prevalence of dysmenorrhea was 77.9% whereby 30.2% of the female students reported having mild dysmenorrhea meanwhile the prevalence of moderate and severe dysmenorrhea was 36.6% and 11.0% respectively. After controlling the confounders, namely sociodemographic characteristics (age, family income and BMI) and menstrual characteristics ( menstrual cycle regularity and flow amount), multifactorial ANOVA analysis showed that there was a statistically significant mean difference in summary scores of physical (50.6 vs. 55.5, p < 0.001) and mental (49.4 vs. 52.8, p < 0.001) components between the female students with and without dysmenorrhea. In conclusion, female students with dysmenorrhea had a significantly lower quality of life from the mental and physical aspects. Hence, this study provides an insight on the overwhelming prevalence of dysmenorrhea and its impact on the quality of life of female medical students who are already under much academic stress. Some of the limitations associated with this study and cross sectional studies in general could be well addressed by prospective longitudinal studies.
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Keywords
Dysmenorrhea