i'm from israel, CF population - 450. recently a research was conducted about gynecological issues in CF females, and some of the results were published in the israeli CF magazine, which i just got yesterday. i won't translate the entire article [quite long...] but here are some facts:+ research was made in 65 females with CF, all over the age of 13 [i participated <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">]+ the average age of starting menstruation in cf females is 14.2 years, while in the non-cf females it's 12 years. research shows that the absolute majority of females with cf reaches sexual adulthood including menstruation, even if a bit later than their healthy peers. + 30% of ladies repoerted irregular periods. + amongst females with cf vaginal infections are very common. 18.5% of the ladies have vaginal infections occuring and re-occuring very often. assumption as to why - frequent use of antibiotics. + loss of bladder control [dripping] during coughing: research made in melbourne, australia showed that out of 55 women, 22% suffered from loss of bladder control during physical activity, such as laughter or coughing. out of those, 42% said that often this makes them avoid effective chest pt (!). in israel, similar results were present. all of the women with this problem said "dripping" occurs during intense coughing, sometimes during chest pt. + sex [now we're getting to the good stuff, ladies <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">]: females with cf start being sexually active at the same age as their helthy peers, average age was found to be 19 years. amongst the ladies in research, 58.5% have sex. + pregnancy: out of ladies who would want to get pregnant, 50% got pregnant with no problems. 28.6% got pregnant after a time period of over a year, 2 ladies were on medical treatment to help them get pregnant. 21.4% still didn't get pregnant although they have been trying for over a year. but - because of all women interviewed, only 11 women said they would like to get pregnant, the results cannot be really-really accurate for all cf females. there was no obvius relation between irregularity of periods and fertility problems.+ there is no proof that pregnancy changes the woman's health conditon, for better or for worse. some women with cf said pregnancy was their best time health-wise, while others said pregnancy was when their health went downhill. several papers show that worsening of fev1 results is the same in women who had been through pregnancies as it is in women who hadn't been.+ pregnancy after lung transplant: one of the ladies in research is after a double lung transplant. she had a normal pregnancy, no complications. she had a birth induction at week 35+5, because doctors feared her lungs would get hurt. induction failed and she delivered through ceasarian. [btw - after research was finished, she got pregnant again, and just had another baby, she's a mother of two now <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">]+ babies of the cf mother: the average pregnancy in this research lasted for 38.4 weeks, plus-minus 2.5 weeks, with four early deliveries [19%], out of which two deliveries were those of twins. 13% of the babies were small for their pregnancy age. in this research, no baby was reported to have major malformation, no cases of intra unterine fetal death or stillbirth, and as of the time of this research, all babies were reported to be healthy. [yay for the babies <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">]well, in a nutshell. sorry for the lousy translation.
CF And Gynecology - Research Results
- Thread starter Lois
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