Title: The combined oral contraceptive pill: what advice should we give when pills are missed?
Abstract: In response to criticism of their article on what advice should be given when combined oral contraceptives (COC) are missed the authors stress that their article was a review ending with a proposal for consideration and debate. They understand that no changes are currently planned to the guidelines contained in the UK FPA leaflets. Moreover they do not believe that their guidelines are more complicated than those of the FPA just different. Apart from returning to regular pill-taking action is only required by the pill-taker for omissions during week one and week three. Pills missed during week one have the potential to lengthen the pill-free interval to the point that ovulation might occur in an unknown minority of women. When there has been relevant sexual exposure one should consider the possibility of emergency contraception. Guillebaud has stated his position that emergency contraception should be employed when the pill-free time has been increased to nine days or when combinations of tablets are missed out of the first week. The authors continue in writing that they do not consider the adjunctive cervical mucus effect to be reliable in such circumstances because actual sperm penetrability was not assessed in relevant studies. Finally they agree that instructions on missed tablets should be clear simple and universally applicable.
Publication Year: 1996
Publication Date: 1996-02-01
Language: en
Type: letter
Indexed In: ['pubmed']
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot