Fibroids

Hello everyone, I’m Dr Meenakshi Banerjee. I’m a consultant at Max hospital and we have our own clinic at Pelvinic. Today I would like to speak on the topic of fibroids.

Fibroids is one of the most common tumours we can see in the reproductive age group basically. So, people are very afraid of this problem. It is like a tumour, whether it will cause harm or what can it have a bad effect or pregnancy, fertility, a lot of questions which arise in our minds. But I feel it is a very underestimated and unknown fact. Most of the people are not aware of the fibroids. They are generally very insignificant tumors. almost ninety nine percent of the time, the fibroid may not cause any problem, may not have problem in causing cancers or anything like that. But I feel that fibroids have most of the, patients present with the symptoms like, heavy cycles, severe pain during the cycles. If the fibroids are very bog they can have pressure symptoms down there, the lower abdominal pain and sometimes when they grow out right the size they may cause severe pain and the patient can present an emergency.
So, most of the symptoms are easily treatable by the simple management of a pain relief or a treatment to control the bleeding. But yes, when the pressure symptoms or the symptoms because of it causing the infertility should be treated and you should visit the doctor. Most of the treatment of the fibroids if they are Asymptomatic they, they might not require any treatment, just a simple conservative treatment and if they are causing a problem then it might require a removal of the fibroid itself or depending on the condition, type of fibroid, multiple number of fibroids, they can sometimes require a removal of the uterus. So, knowing the exact fact of the fibroid is very important. They can be easily diagnosed by the simplest of measure like an Ultrasound and if they multiple in number then probably an MRI will be the best to diagnose it.

The fibroids are of different types, the most common being in the muscle of the uterus which is called as an intramural and they can grow enormously in size before they can even show the symptoms. Even the subserosal fibroid which is outside the muscle of the uterus, they may remain Asymptomatic for long. The most common fibroid which can cause the problems at the earliest, even the smallest of the fibroids, the fibroids which are indenting into the cavity of the uterus and the patient can have server amount of pain, too much of bleeding during the cycle and they need attention the earliest as compared to others. So, a fibroid may have different treatment probably depending on what type of fibroid is there, the number of fibroids, the symptoms, the origin of the fibroids and probably sometime when it is indented into the cavity we might require a hysteroscopy which is a small laparsocpe like instrument which we insert inside the uterus and see whole of the cavity and whether, what amount of fibroids is indented inside. Sometimes they may require removal by the hysteroscopy itself and if they are more towards the outside, probably a laparoscopy, which is a minimal invasive type of surgery, will be the best one to treat it.

For any consultation regarding fibroids and its management and feel the right treatment is required so you should meet with the right diagnosis.

Thank you.