5 ms·

Well, there are separate numbers for "perfect use" versus "typical use". Presumably, perfect use is independent of the person using it.

• adsjfk 12y ago
  Example: I'd guess that when hormonal birth control fails despite being used perfectly, it could well be related to the person's particular biology. So if it failed for them one year, there'd be a high chance of it failing the next. And if it worked for the previous year, there's a lower chance of whatever goes wrong going wrong. (I'd be curious to hear from someone who knows what they're talking about, though!)
  • pstrateman 12y ago
    The perfect use line for "Pill, Evra patch, NuvaRing" virtually matches that of "Hormonal implant" The key difference is the typical use lines are wildly different. (I thought it was interesting that Hormonal implant was more effective than male sterilization.)
• cperciva 12y ago
  Perfect use means "the user did not make any mistakes". A woman who gets pregnant after forgetting to take the pill one day is a "typical use" birth control failure; a woman who becomes pregnant because her natural hormone levels are such that the birth control pill (consistently taken at the same time every day) doesn't render her infertile is a "perfect use" birth control failure. Similarly, couples who intend to use condoms but occasionally forget (or get carried away etc.) would be "typical use", but a man with a cat-like barbed penis which makes holes in condoms could still qualify as "perfect use".
  • SilasX 12y ago
    That always struck me as strange, to "not using it" as using it. It's like the reverse of the tactic of saying that the fried chicken is healthy if you don't eat the skin.
    • cperciva 12y ago
      I believe the medical community refers to this as "patient non-compliance". It's an important factor for doctors to consider; it often makes sense to prescribe a "worse" medication if the "more effective" medicine has side effects which often cause patients to stop early or to skip or forget doses. New formulations of drugs are often advertised to doctors as being just as effective as previous versions but with "improved patient compliance" due to easier dosing schedules (e.g., daily instead of every 8 hours) or fewer side effects.
  • mjevans 12y ago
    In response to the question of 'typical use', I think that it also depends on the context of birth control. There are types of birth control which are somewhat passive; they are renewed at a pre-defined interval which is not related to intercourse. Therefore, considering other types which are only necessary to be applied during the window of intercourse, 'normal use' might reasonably include times where that was the /plan/ but for which the users 'forgot'.
  • baddox 12y ago
    There's a comment worth reading all the way to the end.
    • cperciva 12y ago
      I like to think that all of my comments are worth reading to the end!
      • baddox 12y ago
        I'll skip right to the end from now on, to know what I'll be getting myself into.