Contraceptive use, pelvic inflammatory disease, and fertility problems among American women: 1982

To examine the relationships between contraceptive use, pelvic inflammatory disease, and fertility problems, we analyzed data from the 1982 National Survey of Family Growth. This nationally representative sample of reproductive age women in the United States provides the first population-based estimates of fertility problems and pelvic inflammatory disease. Self-reported pelvic inflammatory disease was higher among women who had ever used an intrauterine device (23%) than among those who had ever used oral contraceptives (17%). Controlling for other variables, fertility problems were most common among women who had never used a method (42%), but they were also more common among oral contraceptive users (26%) than intrauterine devices users (17%). Our findings are consistent with the hypotheses that intrauterine devices were used primarily by women with proved fertility and oral contraceptives were associated with pelvic inflammatory disease in complex ways, although the exact nature of this association and the underlying disease are not yet completely understood.