Obstetrics and Gynecology: GynecologyMenorrhagia II: is the 80-mL blood loss criterion useful in management of complaint of menorrhagia?☆
Section snippets
Study design and methods
The basic study design and methods, including coding of referral reason and patient reasons for clinic attendance, were described elsewhere16; blood loss collection and measurement are described in a companion article.12 The self-completed clinic questionnaire asked each woman to respond to 16 statements about menstrual experience and to report for each experience whether it occurs in her case and, if so, how much of a problem it poses (no/slight/marked/severe problem) and to note which of
Recruitment and participation
Recruitment for the wider study (952 participants) has been reported,16 and the characteristics of the subset who collected their used sanitary protection have been described in the companion article.12 The 226 women who collected their used sanitary protection comprised 26% of the 865 women who satisfied the criteria for collection, and 180 of these women were recruited early enough for an 8-month follow-up by case note review (80%).
Description of menstrual experience
The distribution of measured blood losses has been reported
Comment
The most striking finding is the clinical irrelevance of the established threshold definition of menorrhagia, blood loss in excess of 80 mL. Although there is a significant trend for difficulties with containment of blood flow to become more prevalent with increasing blood loss volume, this effect is largely due to the heaviest and lightest loss groups, whereas the 2 groups with loss either side of 80 mL are virtually indistinguishable. A similar pattern is observed for iron status, for
Acknowledgements
We thank Elaine Kacser and Dorothy Lyons, the study research nurses, and the many patients who participated in this study.
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