Severity of Menopausal Symptoms and Its Association with Various Sociodemographic Variables: A Hospitalbased Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Aims: Menopause is a natural process with short term and long term health implications in menopausal women. There is variation in severity of menopausal symptoms among menopausal women and various socio-demographic factors are responsible for the difference of experience of symptoms. This study was conducted to assess the severity of menopausal symptoms and explore its association with various socio-demographic factors.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional analytical study done in a tertiary care hospital for duration of one year. All the menopausal women visiting outpatient department of Obstetrics and Gynecology were enrolled in the study and interviewed using preformed proforma and Nepali version of Menopausal Rating Scale (MRS) about demographic variables and menopausal symptoms severity respectively.

Results: Among 411 menopausal women with symptoms, 373 (90.75%) had nonsevere symptoms (MRS score <16) and 38 (9.25%) had severe symptoms (MRS≥16).
We found that women from Dalit ethnicity (AOR 1.5; 95% CI: 0.51, 4.43), Madhesi ethnicity (AOR 2.62; 95% CI: 0.27, 24.96), , women who smoked (AOR 1.64; 95% CI: 0.68, 3.93) and who had any medical disorders (AOR 1.59; 95% CI: 0.80, 3.17) did not have statistically significant association with severity of symptoms.

Conclusions: Severe menopausal symptoms were not common in our study. No statistically significant association was found between symptoms severity and sociodemographic variables.