Gynaecological Disorders Among Adolescent Girls Attending a Tertiary Care Hospital in South India: a Cross-Sectional Study.

ABSTRACT

Background: Adolescents in India contribute to 22% of the country’s population and are susceptible to various preventable and treatable health issues. Objectives: To estimate the burden and to describe the pattern of gynaecological disorders among adolescent girls attending the outpatient and inpatient departments of a private medical college hospital in South India. Materials and methods: This was a hospital based cross sectional analytical study done among 500 adolescent girls of 10-19 years age group in a private medical college hospital in South India during December 2020 to December 2021 using a pretested questionnaire. Data was analysed using IBM SPSS version 23. Chisquare test or Fischer exact test was done to find the association between categorical variables. Mann Whitney U test was used to compare the difference between means. P value less than 0.05 was considered to be significant for all comparisons. Results: Mean age of study population was 15.94 ± 2.52 years. Menstrual abnormalities reported in 303 (60.6%) girls followed by 240 (48%) girls had leucorrhoea, 68 (13.6%) had urinary tract infection and 54(10.8%) had PCOS. Conclusion: There is a high burden of gynaecological disorders and lack of awareness on various components of adolescent reproductive and sexual health among adolescents.