ABSTRACT
Dysmenorrhea is the most common of gynecologic complaints. It affects half of all female adolescents today and represents the leading cause of periodic college/school absenteeism among that population. To evaluate the menstrual problem specially dysmenorrhea and its severity in female medical students and its effect on their regular activities. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study; conducted on 107 female medical students, all participants were given a questionnaire to complete; questions were related to menstruation elucidating variations in menstrual patterns, history of dysmenorrhea and its severity, pre-menstrual symptom and absenteeism from college and /or class; to detect the severity of dysmenorrhea we used the verbal multi-dimensional scoring system, participants were given 20 minutes to complete the questionnaire. The mean age of subjects at menarche was 12.5 (±1.52) years, with a range of 10-15 years. The prevalence of dysmenorrhea was 73.83%; approximately 4.67%of dysmenorrhic subjects had severe dysmenorrhea. The average duration between two periods and the duration of menstrual flow were 28.34 (±7.54) days and 4.5 (±2.45) days respectively. Prevalence of other menstrual disorders like irregularity, prolonged menstrual bleeding, heavy menstrual bleeding and PCOD were 7.47%, 10.28%, 23.36% and 3.73% respectively. Among female medical students who reported dysmenorrhea; 31.67% and 8.68% were frequently missing college & classes respectively. Premenstrual symptom was the second most (60.50%) prevalent disorder and 67.08% reported social withdrawal. Dysmenorrhea and PMS is highly prevalent among female medical students, it is related to college/class absenteeism, limitations on social, academic, sports and daily activities. Maximum participants do not seek medical advice and self treat themselves with prostaglandin inhibitors; like Ibuprofen.