Dr. Rapkin is a Clinical Fellow in Family Planning in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Mitchell D. Creinin, MD Dr. Creinin is Professor and Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of California, Davis, in Sacramento, Calif.
The authors report that they have no relevant financial affiliations.
Schwarz and colleagues surveyed 412 women in Pittsburgh family planning clinics who were seeking EC or pregnancy testing and found that 15% of these women would be interested in same-day insertion of an IUD.18 This number increased if the IUD was free among women who reported difficulty with access to contraception.
In an observational study, Turok and colleagues offered women who were seeking EC a choice between the copper IUD and oral LNG and followed them for 6 months. Both methods were offered free of charge. They had assumed that, for every 20 women choosing oral LNG, one would choose the copper IUD. What they found was quite different: For every 1.5 women who chose oral LNG, one chose the copper IUD. Even more impressive was the number of women still using highly effective contraception (IUD, implant, or sterilization) 6 months later—4.5% in the oral LNG group and 61.5% in the IUD group. By the end of the 6-month period, two pregnancies had occurred in the oral LNG group and none in the IUD group.
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