Quality of Life after Menopause in Pakistani Women

Background: With the increase in life expectancy of women all over the world, women are expected to spend almost 1/3rd of their life in menopause phase, usually starting in 4th to 5th decade of life. Objective: This study was planned to look for quality of life of women during menopause in Pakistan. Material and methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Gynaecology and Obstetrics department of Lady Atchison Hospital, Lahore over a period of 3 months from June, 2015 to August, 2015. Menopause-Specific Quality of Life Questionnaire (MENQOL) was distributed among 120 patients with the age range of 51-80 years presenting in Outdoor department of the institution. All the demographic details and MenQol results were analyzed. Also Odd’s ratio (OR) was calculated for these symptoms according to age groups of the patients. Results: The mean age of the patients was 60 ± 5.8 years. The mean age of patients at time of menarche was calculated as 13.4 ± 1.80 years and the mean age at menopause was 49.10 ± 3.98 years. We found that the most common symptom of the patients in our study was low backache and the least reported symptom was drying skin. The OR was also calculated for various symptoms according to age of the patients but it was found significant only (OR:10.9; (4.467 – 26.58) for vasomotor symptoms in our study. Conclusion: Menopausal symptoms may vary in different parts of the world. Therefore exact determination of these symptoms in our society is essential as it can help us to identify preventable factors and educate our women about their quality of life. Page 2 of 3 Citation: Waheed K, Khanum A, Butt A, Ejaz S, Randhawa FA (2016) Quality of Life after Menopause in Pakistani Women. Gynecol Obstet (Sunnyvale) 6: 367. doi:10.4172/2161-0932.1000367 Volume 6 • Issue 4 • 1000367 Gynecol Obstet (Sunnyvale) ISSN: 2161-0932 Gynecology, an open access journal In our study, we found that low backache and other physical symptoms were most prevalent in our patients. In a similar study by Nusrat et al., most common symptoms among menopausal women were found to be backache and bodyaches in Pakistani women [15], these symptoms are more severe in women who don’t do exercise. Similarly in another study by Nisar et al., most common symptom was bodyaches in 81.7% of patients [9]. In an Indian study, most commonly found symptom was fatigue in 61% of patients [14]. This is in contrast to most of the western studies, in which vasomotor symptoms particularly hot flushes is found as more common [13,16]. This may be due to cultural differences among different regions. In a study conducted by Zeleke et al. factors which were significantly associated with post-menopausal symptoms included age, bilateral oophorectomy, obesity and being a caregiver for another person [17]. menopausal symptoms, as experienced over the last month: vasomotor (items 1-3), psychosocial (items 4-10), physical (items 11-26), and sexual (items 27-29). Items pertaining to a specific symptom are rated as present or not present, and if present, how bothersome on a zero (not bothersome) to six (extremely bothersome) scale [10]. All the data were noted on the proforma. A sample size of 115 female patients was calculated using 95% confidence level and 4% margin of error taking the expected vasomotor symptoms in 95% of post-menopausal women [11]. All the data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. For quantitative variables like age of patients and score of quality of life tool mean ± S.D were calculated. For qualitative variables frequency and percentages were calculated. The MenQol score for each question was stratified according to the age groups of the patients and Odd’s ratio (OR) was calculated.