earticle

영어

Purpose: The present study intended to reveal the association between the physique of adolescent women and dysmenorrhea, and the factors related to the frequency of dysmenorrhea. Methods: The study subjects included 511 girls of a women's high school in Daejeon city and they were, during the period of March 1st through April 30th, 2005, given self-administered questionnaires about frequency of menstruation, age, physique, exercise, and such menstruation-related items as age of menarche, menstrual period and days, and amount. Results: As with the frequency of dysmenorrhea, 38.4% experienced it 「always」, 44.6% 「occasionally」, and 17.0% 「almost scarcely」, and those with dysmenorrhea accounted for 83.0% of the subjects. The frequency of dysmenorrhea was not significant difference according to the BMI and HPI. However, the lower the age of menarche and the greater the amount of menstrual flow, the more frequent dysmenorrhea. The symptoms of dysmenorrhea included the highest frequency of low back pain(68.5%) and it was followed by abdominal pain(65.9%), sensibility(54.0%), fatigue(51.7%), and nervousness(49.5%). These accompanied symptoms tended to be worse as the frequency of dysmenorrhea increased. The multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that the relative risk of frequency of dysmenorrhea is 2.2 times in age of 14, by a standard age of 15 as menarchial age, 2.2 in 13, and 3.1 in below 12. The menstrual days was 3.0 times in both below 2 days and over 8 days with the standard days of 3-7 days. The menstrual amount was 1.9 times in the group with a greater amount of menstrual bleeding and 1.5 times in the group with a less amount than the normal group, respectively. Conclusion: The above results suggest that the rate of experiencing dysmenorrhea was up to 83.0% and 38.4% from these had dysmenorrhea upon every menstruation. It is thought that dysmenorrhea could be a great disadvantage sufficient to impair optimal health to a larger body of school girls. Further, for quality of life, it is required that more fundamental strategies instead of pain killers or others for palliation of dysmenorrhea would be established among adolescents.