Vaginal douching (vd) practice and adverse health effects of 15-49 years married women

Abstract

OBJECTİVE: The purpose of the study is to explore the vaginal douching practice and adverse health effects of the 15-49 age, married women in Konya.
MATERIAL AND METHOD: The population of this descriptive- cross-sectional study is 15-49 age, married women who recruited in the number 15 health-center region. The sample consisted of 183 women who were selected with systematic sampling method. A questionnaire designed with researcher based on literature which was 30 questions include fertility characteristics, VD practice and adverse health effects  was used to collect data. The data were collected by the researcher with home visiting between April-May 2005. Descriptive statistics and X² test were used to analysis data.
RESULTS: The mean age of women in the study group is 33.5±7.86, 87. 4 % has primary school education, 68.3 % middle income, 54.6 % practice VD. The mean year of VD practice is 12.9±8.8  and 65.1 % douche at least once a week.    The reasons of the women’s VD practices are religious practice (45.4 %), cleaning (41.5%) and preventing pregnancy(13.1%) and, 68.9 % of women don’t know harmfull efects of VD. There was no difference between history of sterility, extopic pregnancy, abortus, low birth weigh, symptoms of genito-urinary infection and its frequency and VD in the X² test. There was a difference between contraceptive method used and VD.
CONCLUSION: Sterility, extopic pregnancy, abortus, low birth weigh, symptoms of genito-urinary infection and its frequency  were not related to VD. We suggest that the women have been educated about adverse health effects of VD and analytic researches may be planned for causal relationship between adverse health effects and VD.