SELF-ADMINISTRATION WITH UNIJECT(R) OF THE ONCE-A-MONTH INJECTABLE CONTRACEPTIVE CYCLOFEM(R)

The objective of this study was to evaluate women's acceptance of and ability to self-administrate the injectable contraceptive Cyclofem(R) using prefilled UniJect(R) devices. A total of 102 women were invited to participate in the study. Fourteen women (13.7%) refused to partici pate. Of the remaining 88 women, 32 women (31.4%) consented to partici pate and were trained using oranges but were still afraid of the proce dure and ultimately refused to self-administer the injections. Only 56 women (55%) ultimately self-injected Cyclofem with UniJect. They perf ormed a total of 144 injections, all of them on the ventral side of th e thigh. When nurses evaluated women's ability to activate the devices , they found that more than 80% were succesful in both the group of wo men that later self-administered the injections and the group that did not. The evaluation of the self-administered injection technique show ed that more than 90% of the women correctly self-administered the con traceptive using UniJect. With respect to the opinion of the women abo ut the self-administration of the contraceptive, more than 50% (32 of 56) of women who self-injected preferred to self-administer the inject ion and said that they wished to continue with the self-administration , one-third (17) reported that they were afraid, and seven women (12.5 %) expressed the opinion that the injection in the thigh was more pain ful than the administration in the buttocks or arm. In conclusion, our study showed that women can be trained to successfully self-administe r the monthly injectable contraceptive Cyclofem and generally respond positively to UniJect. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reser ved.