Menses cup evaluation study.
OBJECTIVE: To determine whether the menses cup is well tolerated by menstruating women. DESIGN: Prospective descriptive clinical study. SETTING: Normal human volunteers in an academic research environment. PARTICIPANTS: Fifty-one menstruating women recruited between June to December 1991. INTERVENTIONS: Each participant was provided with two menses cups and an instruction sheet. Baseline information, including age, occupation, martial status, parity, description of menstrual flow, and current method used to cope with menstrual flow was collected. Subjects were asked to describe their experience with the cup at 1-, 2-, 6-, and 12-month intervals. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The proportion of women who found the cup acceptable. RESULTS: The cup was used by 51 subjects for a total of 159 cycles. Overall, 23 women (45%) found the cup an acceptable method for coping with menses. Among 29 (57%) women who used the cup for two or more cycles, 62% found it acceptable. CONCLUSION: The menses cup may be an acceptable method for some women for coping with menstrual flow.