Abstract:

Background: The period of Menstruation is an eventful one for a significant number of post-pubescent female as they experience lower abdominal pains, back pains, headache, back pains and other related condition like nausea referred as dysmenorrhea. This study conducted among female students of CUHAS assessed the prevalence of dysmenorrhea, its impacts and self-treatment patterns applied.

Methods: A cross sectional study using self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain data from 385 randomly selected female students of the CUHAS of both first year to final year and the data was analyzed and association between variables was tested.

Results: The prevalence of dysmenorrhea was 82.6% with more than half describing their pains which lasted less than 3 days as moderate, this condition affects the daily activities of up to 74.3% of the respondents. Menstrual duration or flow level do not influence the severity of dysmenorrhea but irregular menstrual flow is significantly associated with severe dysmenorrhea, 10.9% reported their dysmenorrhea to the hospital but increasing pain level is significantly associated with respondent visiting a hospital or use of analgesics medications, ibuprofen, Paracetamol and Diclofenac was the most common medication used notwithstanding the severity of the pains.

Conclusion: The highest prevalence of dysmenorrhea among female students of CUHAS which negatively affects the daily activities of majority of them, although bed rest and heat application such as hot water was the most common treatment method practiced, medication such as Diclofenac and Paracetamol was the most common analgesics drugs used in self-treatments of dysmenorrhea.