Indonesia Conference Directory

Oral contraceptives (OC) are the most regulating method of pregnancy popular in developed and developing countries due to its high success rate, convenience of use and wide availability. On the other hand, OC use can affect some hematological test results, such as the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and mean corpuscular volume (MCV) that can certainly harm patients. Therefore, it is important to know the time limit for OC use that can affect check-up result. Until now, the correlation between the length of OC use and the ESR and MCV values is not clearly elucidated. This study aimed to determine the correlation between the length of OC use and ESR and MCV values. This research is correlational study with cross-sectional approch. The research subject was obtained by snowball sampling of 18 healthy women (age 30-45 years) who used OC in Makassar. All of them were checked for the ESR and MCV values using the Westergreen and Flowcytometry method, respectively. From statistical analysis using Person Correlation test, it was found a significant correlation between the length of OC use and ESR value (P <0.05). The longer use of OC led to an increase of ESR value which could occur from the first 4 months until 8 years of OC use. In contrary, there was no significant difference between the length of OC use and MCV value.