Are IUDs for college students, a waste of time and money?
At the college health service (where I work), clinicians do not want to insert IUDs because they say it’s a waste of money as students might change their mind and want it out in a year. A clinician at the Contraceptive Technology Conference in San Francisco, March 2009 Dr. Jeffery Peipert: “WRONG! Many students will continue on using an IUD. IUDs have higher not lower rates of continuation than pills and other methods.” Dr. Robert A. Hatcher: The typical use failure rate of pills is 8%. The typical use failure of IUDs is less than 1%. Data from the University of Michigan and UNC Chapel Hill (Linda Potter) suggest that 50% of women miss 3 or more pills from the 3rd cycle of pills!!! If anything, we should be encouraging college students to rethink their choice of pills as it is pills that have been documented to have low continuation rates! Of course, the answer is that both pills and IUDs are important OPTIONS for college students and we should be presenting the advantages and disadvan
