Menopausal symptoms in postmenopausal period, severity and affecting factors

This study aims to define the menopausal symptoms of women during postmenopausal period, their severity and affecting factors. The population of this study consists of 500 women in postmenopausal period registered in 19 Mayıs Family Health Center. The sample group is comprised of 385 postmenopausal women conforming to the research criteria. The data gathering tool was personal information tool and SF-36 living quality scale. The data was collected using direct interview technique with women who gave informed consent. SPSS 11.5 package program was used for evaluating the data. The resulting data was analyzed using Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis H, chi square, Pearson correlation test and One way Anova Pos Hoc Tukey tests. The average age of women was 58.00±6.94 and the average menopause age was 49.21±4.25. 83.1% of women graduated from elementary school, 68.3% is married, 51.7% has chronic disease, 50.4% is obese and 29.9% is informed about the menopausal period. Investigating the menopausal symptoms, the symptoms found in women were related to vasomotor in 83.1%, emotional in 81.2%, MMS in 69.1%, muscoskeletal system in 63.4%, urogenital system in 49.0% and hair and skin related in 32.4%. The most severe symptom was in joints and bones (3.94±3.41), while the least severe symptoms were hair growth (0.88±2.20). A statistically meaningful correlation was found between the marital statuses of women with experiencing MSS and muscoskeletal system symptoms, educational status with experiencing emotional symptoms, use of HRT with experiencing vasomotor symptoms (p<0.05). Furthermore, a positive correlation was identified between the Body-Mass Index and numbing-tingling and muscoskeletal system symptom severity (p<0.05). The average living quality score of women that are not experiencing menopausal symptoms is meaningfully high compared to women experiencing symptoms (p<0.05). A negative correlation was observed between the mean severity scores of menopausal symptoms and mean living quality scores (p<0.05). Keywords: Menopause, Menopausal Symptoms, Living Quality