Quality of life among post - menopausal women in rural Puducherry

R Surendar ,G Durgapriya ,M Arthi ,Srikanth Sajja

doi:10.17511/ijphr.2019.i3.03

Abstract

Background: Postmenopausal women are the most vulnerable group affected due to physiological changes. The quality of life during the menopause is assessed by the frequency and severity of menopausal symptoms. Objectives: To assess the menopause symptoms and quality of life among post-menopause women in rural Puducherry and study the socio-demographic factors associated with menopausal symptoms and quality of life. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in rural field practicing area of a medical college. 133 postmenopausal women were selected from 3 villages by Simple random sampling. Socio-demographic details and menopausal symptoms using modified MENQOL questionnaire was elicited. Body mapping was done by the participants. Results: The mean age was 51±2 years. About 32% of them were suffering from any one of the chronic diseases like Diabetes, Hypertension. Joint pain (79.2%) was found to have higher prevalence and reduced sexual desire (2.3%) as lower prevalence. Overall, sixty four study population had no menopausal symptoms followed by 35 with mild, 20 had moderate menopausal symptoms. Significant association was seen between age of menopause and the severity of the menopausal symptoms in vasomotor and psychosocial domains. Positive correlations were seen among the domains. Majority (65%) of the women perceived pain any of the parts in body mapping which affects their day to day life. Conclusion: The Quality of life (QOL) of the post-menopausal women was poor based on the presence of symptoms in many domains.

Highlights

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), it was estimated that in 2030, 1.2 million women will be premenopausal or postmenopausal which will increase by 4.7 million per year [1]
Mean age of the study population was found to be 51±2 years with half of them were illiterate which was lower than the study by Borker et al and Sarkar et al in Jamnagar, Bansal et al in Punjab where the mean age was 57 years with 67% illiterate [13,14,15]
In a study done by Vijayalakshmi et al among periand post-menopausal women in rural areas of Amritsar using menopausal rating scale reported that most prevalent symptoms were feeling tired (92.90%), headache (88.8%), joint and muscular discomfort (76.20%), physical and mental exhaustion (60.1%), sleeplessness (54.40%) [19]

Summary

Introduction

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), it was estimated that in 2030, 1.2 million women will be premenopausal or postmenopausal which will increase by 4.7 million per year [1]. Menopause is the physiological event in women’s life It means permanent cessation of menstruation at the end of reproductive life, due to loss of ovarian follicular activity. The quality of life during the menopause is assessed by the frequency and severity of menopausal symptoms. Objectives: To assess the menopause symptoms and quality of life among post-menopause women in rural Puducherry and study the socio-demographic factors associated with menopausal symptoms and quality of life. Significant association was seen between age of menopause and the severity of the menopausal symptoms in vasomotor and psychosocial domains. Majority (65%) of the women perceived pain any of the parts in body mapping which affects their day to day life. Conclusion: The Quality of life (QOL) of the post-menopausal women was poor based on the presence of symptoms in many domains

Results

Discussion

Conclusion