Birth Control Devices As Effective As Pills

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31585, 24 January 1968, Page 18

Birth Control Devices As Effective As Pills

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, January 22.

A United States Federal advisory committee said today that intra-uterine devices were almost as effective as birth-control pills, and officials said the risks are about the same—“very slight.” The panel said intra-uterine devices had proved consistently more effective than such traditional contraceptive apparatus as diaphragms and condoms. An I.U.D. Is a small meta! or plastic device that is inserted in the uterus and can remain there for years. It should be both inserted and removed by a trained medical person. The committee, advising the United States Food and Drug Administration, said after a one-year study that I.U.Ds were especially effective among people of lower economic status because they require only the original insertion to be effective. Other contraceptives require frequent attention. The cost of the I.U.D.s was lower than other devices, the committee said. RISK WITH PILLS Discussing the risks of birth-control pills, the committee chairman (Dr Louis Hellman) said studies in Great Britain had shown the pills to have caused thromboembolism, clots which closed off a blood vessel. But, he added, the risks were extremely small. Some women taking the

pills were said to have died of strokes or other fatal attacks caused by thromboembolism.

Dr Hellman, who is chairman of obstetrics and gynaecology at the New York State University in Brooklyn, told reporters at a briefing on the report that the new information on thromboembolism would modify the committee’s conclusions about the pills, reached in 1966. '

The finding then, generally, was that their use had not been proved unsafe. Officials acknowledged that many recent reports had been made about illnesses or deaths attributed , to the pills, and said the committee would explore these and present a new report in 1969. With intra-uterine devices, the slight danger found by the F.D.A.’s advisory committee on obstetrics and gynaecology, was of infection and of perforation of the uterine wall; and the committee recommended legislation to bring these and other medical devices under stricter regulation. A nation-wide survey by the committee revealed 12 deaths and 561 cases of serious illness associated with I.U.D.s in four cases among the 12 deaths, the committee found indications of only a casual relationship to I.U.D.s. About a million American women were estimated to be using the devices, Dr Hellman said, compared with about six million using birthcontrol pills. He doubted whether the device would ever become more

popular than pills in the United States “because we are a medicine-taking country.” But in less-developed countries, it probably would, would.