When considering women’s vascular health, it’s easy to get caught up in all of the statistics that specifically relate to cardiovascular complications. But vascular health extends beyond that of the heart and can strongly affect a woman’s abdominal comfort and health, such as with uterine fibroids and pelvic congestion.
Uterine Fibroid Management
The most common form of benign uterine tumors, uterine fibroids, can manifest a variety of symptoms in a woman’s body, ranging from pelvic pain to excessive menstrual bleeding, urinary incontinence, and more. Treatment of uterine fibroids is also individualized, as a woman’s experience of fibroids will change given her age, weight, and potential pregnancies.
Luckily, management and treatment come in many forms. Hormone treatments, UFE, and more are both safe and common treatments for uterine fibroids.
Uterine Fibroid Embolization (UFE)
Uterine fibroid embolization is the process by which your doctor will safely cut off the flow from an artery to a uterine fibroid, effectively leading it to shrink to the point of elimination. UFE is considered a preferable alternative to hysterectomy by many women, as it is safe, requires no general anesthesia or surgical incisions, and has a history of having a high clinical success rate.
Performed as an outpatient procedure, UFE treatment typically takes less than an hour and features little to no downtime for recovery.
Pelvic Congestion Syndrome Management
Pelvic congestion syndrome occurs when certain veins in a woman’s abdomen become enlarged due to a decrease in functional flow. As the veins grow larger, a woman is more likely to experience chronic pelvic pain. A woman’s risk of experiencing pelvic congestion syndrome also increases if she has given birth to more than one child or is in her child-bearing years.
Treatment and management of this diagnosis may include hormone therapy, sclerotherapy, surgery, and more.
