Long Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) Key Clinical Indicator (KCI)
Year ending 31 March 2024
A National Statistics publication for Scotland
- Published
- 17 September 2024 (Latest release)
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
About this release
Revised on 1 October 2024. We identified an error that affects NHS board prescribing rates in 2023/24 and revisions have been made to excel file "Table 5 - LARC prescribing rate" on tab "Both Sources" and to the chart "LARC prescribing rate by NHS board of prescription". More details on the revisions are provided in Appendix 2 of the Metadata document.
This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports on the prescribing of long acting reversible methods of contraception (LARC) in primary care and sexual health settings in Scotland. This includes the contraceptive implant, intrauterine device (IUD) and intrauterine system (IUS).
Main points
In primary care and sexual health settings combined in 2023/24:
- The LARC prescribing rate decreased from 51.8 to 48.4 per 1,000 women between 2022/23 and 2023/24. This is lower than rates before the Covid-19 pandemic.
- The IUS replaced the contraceptive implant as the most common type of LARC prescribed with rates of 21.3 per 1,000 women, a fall from 21.9 in 2022/23. The rate for contraceptive implants fell from 23.9 in 2022/23 to 20.5 and the rates for IUD increased from 6.1 to 6.6.
- The rate for contraceptive injections increased slightly from 23.9 in 2022/23 to 24.1 in 2023/24.
- There is variation in LARC prescribing across health board areas. Differences in the ages of patients living within the board areas and/or patients living in one area but accessing services in another may contribute to this variation.
- There is variation in LARC prescribing rates across age groups. However, it should be noted that in 17% of prescriptions we do not know the patient's age which may mean that variation by age is less or more than it appears to be.
Background
This report focuses on very long acting methods of contraception; namely the contraceptive implant, IUD and IUS. Contraceptive injections are also reported on but are presented separately.
In typical use, the long acting methods of contraception can have a lower failure rate than alternative reversible methods such as the contraceptive pill or condoms. In September 2015 the Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Framework 2015-2020 Update was published. In August 2021, Reset and Rebuild: A Recovery Plan for Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Services was released, detailing the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on sexual health and blood borne virus services in Scotland. In 2023 the Sexual health and blood borne virus action plan (2023-2026) was published. Increasing the availability of LARC is also one of the aims of the Scottish Government's Women's Health Plan which seeks to drive forward change and improvement in women's health.
Further information
The next release of this publication will be September 2025.
General enquiries
If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please contact Duncan McMaster at phs.maternitystats@phs.scot.
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Older versions of this publication
Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.