• Cervical mucus: converting it into thick, scanty, and viscid stuff, thus, prevents from sperm penetration, and inhibits the sperm capacitation.

• Reducing motility of the oviduct and the uterus, thus, restraining the transfer of sperm and ova.

• Reducing endometrial glandular generation of glycogen, thus, less energy is available to the blastocyst for surviving in uterine cavity.

• Decrease in ovarian sensitivity to the gonadotropin stimulation.

CLINICAL EFFECTIVENESS

The patch is as effective as OCs if it is used appropriately. The numbers of women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy throughout the 1st year of typical and perfect use of the contraceptive patch is well-considered to be quite similar to the OC use.

MERITS OF THE PATCH

• The best part of preferring the patch is that it’s a once a week administration, thus, it is extremely convenient option for majority of users.

• Better compliance in groups of the entire age, but especially better among the adolescents who usually lack the OC compliance.

• Quickly reversible.

• Visible, verifiable patch.

• Less dysmenorrhea.

• Reduction in problems associated to androgen, acne, for instance.

• Reduced risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer.

DEMERITS OF THE PATCH

• The patch is pretty noticeable and one can recognize it just with a bit effort even though privacy may be a concern.

• Patch should be replaced weekly, thus, time consuming and expensive option as well.

• Around 1 to 2 percentage of patches usually detaches and should be replaced.

• Doesn’t prevent from some serious STDs, such as HIV AIDS.

• Room temperature storage is necessary.

• Generic equivalents don’t exist at all and cost could be a matter of anxiety.

• Involves numbers of side effects, including headache, nausea, dysmenorrheal, and breast discomfort.

• Increased risk of myocardial infarction and stroke in the high risk populations, smokers aged 35 years above or women suffering from vascular disease, for instance.

The best thing about the patch is the fact that it’s once a week administration and indeed it’s the main reason why many people usually prefer to go with this option. Of course, there are also a couple of side effects arriving with this treatment option. And when it comes to its most frequent side effects, some of them include nausea, headaches, breast discomfort, and application site reaction.

The contraceptive patch includes 0.75 mg of ethinyl estradiol (EE) and 6 mg of norelgestromin, and was actually designed in order to release 150 ?g norelgestromin and 20 ?g EE to the blood stream via the skin at the gap of every 24 hours. For your kind information, Norelgestromin is a primary active metabolite generated following the oral administration of the norgestimate.

Following the application, EE and norelgestromin soon appear in circulation and arrive at steady state levels just within 48 hours. Much to your surprise, these levels can be higher or lower than therapeutic reference ranges that are developed for OrthoCyclen (25–75 pg/mL and 0.6–1.2 ng/mL, respectively).

Moreover, therapeutic levels of EE and norelgestromin are managed for the seven days of the routine patch wear and during two additional days of the extended wear. When it comes to the half life of EE and norelgestromin, it is 17 hours and 28 hours respectively.

Transdermally administered norelgestromin doesn’t overturn the stimulatory affect of the EE on SHBG (Sex Hormone Binding Globulin), which results in significant increment in SHBG following patch administration as well as some other kind of hepatic proteins.