Intrauterine contraceptives are currently of two distinct types: • copper intrauterine devices (IUDs), in which the copper ion (the actual contraceptive) is released from a band or wire on a plastic carrier the levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system, which releases that progestogen – this will be abbreviated below as either LNG-IUS or just IUS. | Intrauterine contraception Intrauterine contraceptives are currently of two distinct types copper intrauterine devices IUDs in which the copper ion the actual contraceptive is released from a band or wire on a plastic carrier the levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system which releases that progestogen - this will be abbreviated below as either LNG-IUS or just IUS. COPPER-BEARING DEVICES It is time to pardon the intrauterine device This headline to an article says it all. Actually there are 150 million users worldwide but the lion s share is in just one country -China. It seems improbable that the difference between less than 1 of sexually active users in USA or 5 in the UK but 20 in France is explicable by some important difference between the French the British and the US uterus. Do the Chinese and the French have something to teach the rest of the world In many countries women in their late 30s have not been requesting IUDs because they were told in their 20s to avoid that method. This is strange because in reality a woman in her later reproductive years with say two or three children is the ideal user. The devices have changed somewhat but more importantly she has too - a parous cervical canal makes insertion easier and commonly she also has less exposure to STIs than in her youth. 98 Figure 13 Copper IUDs. A T-Safe Cu 380 A QL Quick-Load FP Sales or TT 380 Slimline Durbin B Flexi-T380 FP Sales C GyneFix Durbin FP Sales D Nova-T380 Schering also UT 380 Short Durbin with short stem E Flexi-T 300 FP Sales with short stem F Multlload Cu375 Organon or Load 375 Durbin . Reproduced by kind permission of Dr Anne MacGregor. Some doctors are complying too readily with requests for male or female sterilization that originate partly from medical myths about the intrauterine alternative. Leaving aside the significant advance represented by the LNG-IUS too few women know that the latest banded copper IUDs Figure 13 are in practice comparable to reversible sterilization.
