[Correlation between certain factors in maturation and primary dysmenorrhea in adolescence]

A total of 1,068 randomly chosen adolescent females, aged 10 to 19 years, were questioned about their (painful or painless) menstruation. The obtained rate of the prevalence of dysmenorrhea in the examined adolescent population was 52.9%. The statistical significant difference between the examined adolescent girls with and without dysmenorrhea related to the chronological age (chi 2 = 19.112; p less than 0.05). The rate of frequency of painful menstruation increases with the increasing of the chronological age of the examined adolescent females. It is the highest at the age of 16 to 19 (56.5% in 16 and 61.2% in 19 year-olds). Over the age of fifteen years dysmenorrhea is present in every other examined adolescent girl. The number of examined adolescent females with dysmenorrhea is statistically significant by greater (chi 2 = 44.448; p less than 0.001) in those who had got menarche early (11 and 12 years old). The greatest frequency of dysmenorrhea is estimated in those having got the first menstruation aged 11 (79.2%) and 12 (55.5%) years. The average age of the appearance of menarche in all the examined female population is 12.8 +/- 1.3 years. The average age of the occurrence of the first menstruation in dysmenorrhoic girls is 12.6 +/- 1.1 years and statistically significantly differs from the average age of menarche in the control group of nondysmenorrhoic adolescent females (13.1 +/- 1.2 years of life). In the first gynecological year only one third (29.6%) of the examined adolescent girls had painful menstruation. Up to the fourth gynecological year, 62.4% of the examined adolescent females experienced dysmenorrhea. Three quarters (75.3%) of them had painful menstruation in the sixth gynecological year. There is a statistically significant difference between adolescent girls with and without dysmenorrhea in relation to the gynecological year (chi 2 = 63.604; p less than 0.001).