A study at Johns Hopkins Children's Center found that girls diagnosed with pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) who watched a short educational video were three times more likely to discuss their condition with their partners and to ensure partner treatment than girls diagnosed and treated without seeing the film.
Reporting online ahead of print in the Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, the Hopkins team says disclosure and partner treatment are critical in preventing the sexually transmitted infection that causes PID from getting passed back and forth between the two partners, minimizing the risk for repeat and chronic infections and preventing further spread outside the original pair.
The six-minute video, produced by Hopkins Children's, shows teen girls diagnosed with PID coping with various aspects of care and discussing such issues as notifying one's partner, urging him to get treated, completing a two-week course of antibiotic treatment, returning for follow-up care and abstaining from sexual activity during the treatment.
Girls who saw the video before they were discharged from the ED or the urgent care center were no more likely to finish their medication, return for follow-up and abstain from sex during treatment than those who didn't see it. However, researchers report that a full two-thirds of the 121 girls, ages 15 to 21, did finish their medication — which they got free of charge before they left the medical treatment site — a marked improvement from the times when girls with PID were discharged and just sent to a pharmacy with a prescription.
"The good news is we got these girls to talk to their partners and get them treated, which is great, but there is clearly a whole lot of work to be done to prevent and treat these infections," says lead investigator Maria Trent, M.D., M.P.H., pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist at Hopkins Children's.
The most alarming finding was the abysmal follow-up rate — 24 percent overall — among this subset of female teens who are at high-risk for repeat STIs and unwanted pregnancies, researchers say. Indeed, fewer than one-fourth of the girls in this study reported using contraception, while nearly half had been pregnant in the past and more than half had a history of STIs.