School performance in pubertal adolescents with dysmenorrhea

Abstract

Background Dysmenorrhea is a common gynecological symptom reported in adolescent girls. Prevalence of the condition has been reported to be 45 - 75%. Absenteeism from work and school as a result of dysmenorrhea is common (13 - 51% of women have been absent at least once, and 5 - 14% are often absent due to the severity of symptoms).Objective To compare school performance in pubertal adolescent girls with and without dysmenorrhea.Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted in June 2010 in adolescent females aged 12 - 18 years from the Musthafawiyah School, Mandailing Natal district, North Sumatera. Adolescent females with and without dysmenorrhea were recruited for this study. All participants completed questionnaires including age of menarche, length of menstrual cycle, length of bleeding, number of sanitary napkins used daily and school absences. School reports from two consecutive semesters in one year were used to evaluate subjects’ academic performance. An academic score of higher than 7.5 was considered good performance while scores of less than 7.5 were considered poor. We used the chi-square test to analyze differences in school performance between girls with and without dysmenorrhea.Results One hundred and sixteen participants were divided into 2 groups, those with and without dysmenorrhea, of 58 subjects each. We found no significant difference in school performance between the two groups, P=0.176 (95% CI -0.009 to -0.048 and P=0.08 (95%CI -0.052 to 0.024).Conclusion There was no significant difference in school performance of girls with and without dysmenorrhea.

Primary Dysmenorrhea; Prevalence, Treatment Practices and Impact among High School Students in 2 Secondary Schools in Bafoussam

“…The results showed that students who did not have primary dysmenorrhea had more pass marks than students with dysmenorrhea but was not statistically significant. Our finding was similar to that of Alam et al [24] in Indonesia who found no significant difference in academic performance of students with and without dysmenorrhea though their cut off mark for good and poor average was 7.5/20. We did not find a correlation between pain intensity and performance in contrast to findings from other studies [25] [28] who found a decrease in academic performance with increase dysmenorrhea severity.…”

“…Our respondents being city dwellers like the ones in Yaoundé have figures similar to the latter. However this study date from 1998 but with the shift toward lowering menarcheal age at the rate of 1.1 month per decade [22] [23] [24], it is understandable that our value is slightly lower than theirs. Our value was also similar to results of studies in other countries 12.7 years in Nigeria [25], 13.0 years in Egypt [26], 13.3 years in Indonesia [27].…”