Menstrual Patterns and Disorders Among Adolescent Girls in Bandar Abbas, Iran

Abstract

Background: Menstrual cycle is one of the important factors to protect women’s sexual health, and it is affected by various factors in different individuals. Disrupting the balance of this cycle imposes numerous impacts on women’s health. The present study aimed to investigate the incidence rate and factors associated with menstrual disorders among high school girls in Bandar Abbas, Iran. Materials and Methods: The population of current cross-sectional study was selected through a multi-stage cluster sampling method. Data were collected through a questionnaire. We entered the data of 370 individuals into SPSS software (version 23, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and analyzed them using descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U test. The significant level was considered as 0.05. Results: The mean age of the subjects was 16.29 ± 0.89 years. In addition, the mean menarche age and BMI were 12.82 ± 1.09 years and 20.67 ± 4.17. The incidence rates of hypomenorrhea, hypermenorrhea, amenorrhea, oligomenorrhea, and polymenorrhea were 24.6%, 8.4%, 9.7%, 5.7%, and 13.0%, respectively. There was a significant relationship between age trend with disorders like amenorrhea, oligomenorrhea, and polymenorrhea. However, there was no significant relationship between age trend with hypomenorrhea and hypermenorrhea. Generally, the prevalence of menstrual disorders increased with the increase in BMI, though this relationship was not significant. Conclusion: Due to the relatively high incidence of menstrual disorders in the present study and since numerous major illnesses such as infertility originate from these disorders, we suggest that effective measures be taken to promote the culture of menstrual health among adolescent girls and correct the misconceptions of families.

Keywords

• menstruation disturbances
• polymenorrhea
• hypomenorrhea