Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy at América Arias Hospital

Abstract

Introduction: Voluntary termination of pregnancy, also called induced abortion, is the voluntary termination of a pregnancy by medical or surgical methods before the fetus can be viable.
Objectives: To identify and describe the problem of voluntary interruption of pregnancy at América Arias Hospital from January 1 to July 31, 2019.
Methods: A descriptive and cross-sectional investigation of a prospective hospital registry was carried out including 3980 women between 14 - 47 years of age who attended the pregnancy termination consultation at América Arias Hospital from January 1 to July 31, 2019, to request the voluntary interruption of their pregnancy, after signing the informed consent.
Results: Out of the total number of applicants, 52.4% were between 20 and 29 years old. The secondary school level predominated (84.1%); 58.3% referred stable partner; 65.9% attended the interruption consultation without a partner. 99.8% denied having prior contraception. Complications occurred only in 0.12% of the applicants; no woman died. 64.6% of the patients discharged with a contraceptive method. The medium-acting, injectable contraceptive was the most used (27.7% of the patients), followed by the short-acting ones such as the pill (19.1%), and thirdly the long-acting ones, such as the IUD and the implant (17.6%).
Conclusions: The characterization of our patients was similar to that of other studies, and most of them arrived at the interruption consultation without prior contraception. The most used route of pregnancy termination was the drug and the most used contraceptives were those of medium action.