The Touch vs The Transducer: Can Your Gyno Check Your Cervix In Pregnancy Without an Ultrasound

Technology or the Human Gyno Examiner? The touch of your physician or do you need an ultrasound to figure out what is going on in the case of the health of your cervix in pregnancy? Apparently over 1000 studies have tried to answer the question in one form or an other. Another expert has weighed in with a new series. Dr. Vincenzo Bergehella in a recent editorial in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology got to boast that in the 1990s his mere curiosity regarding measuring cervical lengths in pregnant women now has become a valuable tool and perhaps the next step to solving the problem of prematurity that still plagues maternity wards worldwide. We know that women should have 2.5 cm of cervical length in the middle of the midtrimester (so around 20 weeks say). Cervix that are shorter than this will be found about 10% of the time. By touch about 3/4 of these short cervix will feel just fine. So the touch of your gyno is apparently fooled, at least according to one research examination of this question. Later in pregnancy, touch is as good or even better than ultrasound. If the cervix is completely gone...so completely thinned like at term--a length of 0 mm--it always feels open, so no sophisticated ultrasound is necessary for those women. And the length of 0 mm, nothing to hold those babes back, the delivery rate with in the next few weeks is high. But even if the cervix gets down to 10 mm (short!) only 50% deliver as early as 32 weeks rather than the full term 40. So who gets touched (examined?), do you need to have had symptoms, how about history of problems that put you at risk, what if you have twins or triplets for instance? Definitely if you have a discharge, bleeding, abdominal pains. The less, well, we're sorting through the other 999 articles to figure it out. And when we do, we'll post some theories!

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Passing Your Uterine Lining, Menstrual Period Norms

Decidual Cast Periods can be fairly easy, passing some tissue at a time, or off can come the whole lining in one piece called a decidual cast. Generally the lining of the uterus is only 6-8 mm thick at the time of the menstrual period, and it is shed gradually, a few cells at a time. The decidual cast is when the entire lining passes spontaneously. It's not uncommon, but it usually both uncomfortable, and alarming to some. But us women are designed to have some sort of periods Or Not? We have to pass tissue each month. Or Not? Are they good for us? Or Not? Do we want them? Or Not? Is this something that is individual? Or Not? It's a complex topic that I will be discussing a lot over my time in this blog. So lets start with basics: How much do we bleed and what are we loosing, and just what was this that the patient passed? And another basic: track your periods, and the Women's Health Practice site http://www.womenshealthpractice.com/media/pdf/menstrual_chart.pdf you...

Post-Endometrial Ablation Syndrome

If you have had an endometrial ablation and have developed symptoms of pelvic pain you might have post endometrial ablation syndrome. What is post-endometrial ablation syndrome? It is a constellation of symptoms due to entrapped blood or tissue within a uterus that has previously undergone an endometrial ablation. We are able to diagnose this at Women's Health Practic e but occasionally other conditions are causing similar symptoms. Other complications of endometrial ablation include pregnancy, risks from pre-existing conditions such as a polyp or fibroid, an infection of the uterus, or a pregnancy. If you have had a tubal ligation then it is possible that the condition could be post-ablation tubal sterilization syndrome. The ablation procedure is designed to destroy all lining tissue, but in fact there is no way to confirm the completeness of the ablation. It is thought that either residual or regrowth of the tissue is producing the symptoms of post-endometrial ablation syndrom...

You Have an IUD: But a Positive Pregnancy Test

Fortunately IUD pregnancy failures are rare. But if you have an IUD for contraception, and you get a positive pregnancy test, you probably ask yourself, what next? Well, make your gyno appointment promptly, this is a condition that is not typically an emergency, but it can be and it’s not handled over the phone or on a blog, or through self diagnosis! That being said, some researchers from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas decided to look back at over 4100 women who had IUDs and of those 42 cases who became pregnant in their institution, over about a year period of time, to help understand what these women could expect when they got to their gyno and what actually happened to their pregnancies. Accurate pregnancy diagnosis, pelvic examination, and pelvic ultrasound were the cornerstones of the evaluations. They had very specific ways they looked at their ultrasound to prove there was no pregnancy in the fallopian tube, or partially in the fallopian tube...

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