Consultant urologist Dr George Lee Eng Geap, or a.k.a Dr G, gives advices to a fresh graduate who is contemplating on using oral contraceptive pills to prevent her from getting pregnant as she pursues her career.
00:00Hello there, welcome to the fresh month of putting Dr. G on the spot.
00:04In the month of June, we're going to dwell into the exciting subject of contraception.
00:11Obviously, the whole mode of preventing pregnancy is called contraception.
00:16It can range from hormonal treatment, barrier technique, devices and sterilisation.
00:24So, obviously, we're going to deal with a very common mode of contraception, which is oral contraceptive pills.
00:38Hormonal treatment actually can be divided into several different forms.
00:43It can be combined oral contraceptive pills, progestogen-only oral contraceptive pills or morning-after-oral contraceptive pills.
00:51And, obviously, the vast majority of this is only for women.
00:57But, hormone can also be applied for men to suppress the sperm production, but it is not widely available.
01:03Apart from preventing unwanted pregnancy, oral contraceptive pills also is extremely important in preventing high-risk pregnancy in women who have got advancing age closer to menopause.
01:19So, the hormonal technique itself can be divided into the combined oral contraceptive pills,
01:26which essentially is a combination of progestogen and estrogen in order to stop the environment that is suitable for pregnancy.
01:37The second type is actually progestogen-only oral contraceptive pills.
01:43Both of these actually have certain risk that is developing.
01:47In the short term, some people may feel bloaty sensation, a bit of breast tenderness, and various forms of nausea and vomiting.
01:56But, vast majority of people have no side effects at all.
02:00But, in long term, there were certain concerns.
02:03For example, somebody who has got higher risk of getting breast cancer perhaps needs to have a little bit of close monitoring.
02:10And, someone who actually has higher risk of clot formation also needs to be aware because the hormonal changes might predispose someone from getting clots, which is deep vein thrombosis.
02:24There are also other modality of side effects such as depression is also noted in medical literature.
02:32But, what is more important is how effective it is.
02:37In the normal circumstance, if it's used very meticulously, oral contraceptive pill, which is both combined and also progestogen-only,
02:48has effectiveness of preventing the pregnancy by 99%.
02:54But, in reality, we know that there might be some non-compliance or missing the tablet.
03:02In real life, the pregnancy rate probably can be as high as 10% in the real situation where it's taken.
03:10But, this form of oral contraceptive pills give women empowerment so that they control whatever they want to choose to have pregnancy or not.
03:22For the following week, we're going to discuss the modality of condoms.
03:28Then, you need to stay tuned for next week's Putting Dr. G on the Spot.
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