Determining the Rate of Oral Contraceptive Pills Failure in Unintended Pregnancies

Unintended pregnancy leads to unpleasant physical and psychological outcomes in both infant and mother. Unfortunately, many of these pregnancies are seen in women who use reliable contraceptive methods such as oral contraceptive pills. The aim of current study was to investigate the prevalence of oral contraceptive pills (OCP) in unintended pregnancies and the factors associated with its failure.

This descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 1000 pregnant women who referred to the obstetrics ward of Imam Reza hospital in Mashhad for labor from 2007 to 2008. A questionnaire was used for obtaining the demographics and type of contraception. Then mothers who had used oral contraceptive pills were asked for their applied methods. Data were analyzed by SPSS 11.5 software.

34.5% of studied women had unintended pregnancy that 3.91% had used contraceptive methods. The main method used in unintended pregnancies was OCP (40.3%). In OCP consumers, just 19.7% used OCP correctly. Fear of complications was the most prevalent cause of wrong use (42.2%). Other factors associated with OCP failure were age, education level and economic state which had significant relationship with failure (p<0.05).

Since OCP use is the most common contraception method and fear of complications is the most important cause of failure, training the correct method of OCP use and informing consumers about complications should be emphasized.