The ring or the patch? You decide

Women using birth control pills who want to switch to a non-daily contraceptive may be happier with a vaginal contraceptive ring than a contraceptive patch, according to the first head-to-head comparison of the two methods.

Seventy-one percent of women assigned to use the ring during the study said they would keep using it after the study was over, while 73,5 percent of women using the patch said they'd rather go back on the Pill.

"Women who are content with their combined oral contraceptive and have never used a patch or ring are more likely to be happy with the ring than the patch," Dr. Mitchell D. Creinin of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and his colleagues conclude.

Both the ring and the patch deliver the same hormones contained in combined birth control pills. The NuvaRing, made by Roseland, New Jersey-based Organon, which funded the current study, is a small plastic ring inserted into the vagina once a month.

The OrthoEvra patch, made by Ortho Pharmaceuticals in Raritan, New Jersey, is used once weekly. The Food and Drug Administration has warned that the patch could increase the risk of blood clots in the legs, lungs, or other parts of the body with life-threatening results.

To compare the two methods, the researchers randomly assigned 500 women who were using combined oral contraceptives, or had used them in the past three months, to switch to the patch or the ring for three cycles.

Women on the patch were more than twice as likely to quit using it by the third cycle as women who were using the ring, the researchers found, and seven times more likely to say they didn't want to keep using the patch.

The researchers also saw more side effects in patch users, including longer periods, nausea and mood swings. Vaginal discharge was the one side effect more common among ring users than patch users. Forty-six percent of patch users said their patch fell off at least once during any cycle, while 20,4 percent of ring users had expelled the device at least once during any cycle. Women on the ring were more likely to say they were satisfied with the contraceptive method and would recommend it to others than women on the patch.

"These findings do not imply that all women using a combined oral contraceptive should be counselled to switch to a ring," the researchers write. "However, the information from this study can help health care providers counsel women who desire a non-daily combined oral contraceptive method."


Source : Babynet