Endometrial ablation is a procedure that is carried out to reduce excessive menstrual bleeding. Women often have to deal with a thickened endometrial lining. This thick lining causes heavy bleeding, clots and days of bleeding. Many different conditions like polycystic ovaries syndrome, thickened endometrial lining and hormonal imbalances, all can lead to heavy bleeding.
Once the patient has passed the child-bearing age or has already borne children, she can consider alternative treatments to reduce this bleeding. Hysterectomy is usually the main treatment where the uterus and sometimes the ovaries are removed. Women often look for alternatives to hysterectomy which is usually a more permanent solution to excessive menstrual bleeding. Before attempting to do any procedure to alter the thickness of the endometrial wall, doctors need to check whether the patient has any existing complication like possibility or risk of uterine cancer or unnatural thickened wall of the uterus, fibroids, PCOS and other complications.
Endometrial ablation is one such solution. In this procedure the doctor will use external devices to jarr and damage the thickened endometrial lining. This procedure does not always do what it is supposed to do.
Women often complain of excessive bleeding in the months following this procedure. Usually this bleeding is uninterrupted and for months at a time. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and vaginal discharge are also after-effects of endometrial ablation. Fallout from this procedure is that women face varying degrees of pain, especially in the pelvic region. This recurrent and chronic pain is called post endometrial ablation syndrome.
The post endometrial ablation syndrome is when the patients have to bear high degree of pelvic pain, with or without a change in their bleeding pattern. The main symptoms of this condition is pain – pelvic pain, pain in the back, pain in the legs, cramps, even pains that women have compared to labour. Doctors recommend ultrasound scans to identify if there are instances of adenomyosis or excess growth of cells in the uterine wall.
There is no treatment for post endometrial ablation syndrome. Especially because every woman who has an endometrial ablation goes through different symptoms and complications after the procedure. For some women, the endometrial ablation procedure works well while for others, all it does it postpone the eventual excessive bleeding.
Often women need to eventually undergo a hysterectomy even after undergoing endometrial ablation. Sometimes women suffer through the post endometrial ablation syndrome for months and even years, eventually choosing a hysterectomy.
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