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WASHINGTON -- Regardless of parity, one in five women under age 30 who undergoes tubal sterilization later regrets having the procedure, Dr. Herbert Peterson said at the FIGO World Congress of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
This was one of the key findings in a long-term study of 10,685 sterilized women aged 18-44 who were followed from 1978 to 1992 by the U.S. Collaborative Review of Sterilization Working Group.
The investigators found that 20% of the under-30 age group later regretted having the procedure, compared with 6% of the 30-and-over group, said Dr. Peterson, who directed the study for many years. "It's age, age, age," he said, cautioning that young women should receive extra counseling to make sure they understand the long-term implications of the procedure.
The issue of regret was one of the most difficult aspects of the study to analyze, said Dr. Peterson of the World Health Organization in Geneva. Other concerns, such as the risk of ectopic pregnancy and subsequent need for hysterectomy, were more easily quantified, but regret is such a mutable concept that a woman might think it was "a good idea in the morning but by late afternoon might feel that it probably wasn't," he said.
Dr. Peterson and his coinvestigators used ...
Source: HighBeam Research, A Fifth of Women Regret Decision to Sterilize.