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Am J Public Health. 1997 July; 87(7): 1207–1211. | PMCID: PMC1380899 |
Vaginal douching and adverse health effects: a meta-analysis. J Zhang, A G Thomas, and E Leybovich Department of Community Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City 10029-4571, USA. Abstract OBJECTIVES: The meta-analysis described here reviewed the current literature on adverse health effects of vaginal douching. METHODS: Papers published in English from 1965 through 1995 were potentially eligible. RESULTS: One third of White women and two thirds of Black women of reproductive age reported douching regularly. Analyses indicated that vaginal douching increases the overall risk of pelvic inflammatory disease by 73% and the risk of ectopic pregnancy by 76%. Frequent douching was shown to be highly associated with pelvic inflammatory disease and modestly associated with cervical cancer. CONCLUSIONS: Current literature suggests that frequent douching increases the risk of pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, and, possibly, cervical cancer. Full text Full text is available as a scanned copy of the original print version. Get a printable copy (PDF file) of the complete article (1.4M), or click on a page image below to browse page by page. Links to PubMed are also available for Selected References. These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article. - DerSimonian R, Laird N. Meta-analysis in clinical trials. Control Clin Trials. 1986 Sep;7(3):177–188. [PubMed]
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