BMJ 1995;311:1638 (16 December)

Letters

New group will review evidence for effective care in family planning

EDITOR,--One of the problems in the provision of family planning is the dearth of useful, clinical randomised controlled trials on which to base our practice. For some rare events such as thrombosis, heart attacks, and stroke, randomised controlled trials are clearly not feasible and we rely on the epidemiological data from well conducted studies. Some factors, however, are readily amenable to randomisation. John Guillebaud suggests that it would be appropriate for a client to start taking a pill containing desogestrel or gestodene if the predictable incidence of breakthrough bleeding, acne, headache, and weight gain with alternative pills is higher.1 It is extraordinary that, although three million women in Britain are using the pill for contraception, we have little evidence to support this advice.

I have performed a Medline search, from 1976 to the present, for randomised controlled trials comparing these minor side effects associated with second generation pills with those . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Advising women on which pill to take
John Guillebaud
BMJ 1995 311: 1111-1112. [Extract] [Full Text]

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