Now, there are women who are suffering from these causes but are very close to menopause. So they may be 50 or 51, but they're still getting their periods and they're thinking, “man, if I was only in menopause, at least the hormones would go down and I would not be suffering from these issues anymore.” But the thing is, we don't know when they're going to reach menopause.

“ I’m going through IVF and I’ve just been diagnosed with a fibroid, do I need to have it removed?”

This is a question I get very frequently, so let's look at it. Here are my top three tips to figure out whether you need to remove that fibroid.

I wanted to share a story about a patient that I saw in my office this month. She was a young patient in her early thirties, and she came to me with this large fibroid. Now, she had been to the doctor maybe four years ago, but not a gynecologist. She went to a different doctor who said, "Oh yeah, your stomach is getting bigger, but maybe, you know, I think you're gaining weight, you should exercise a little bit more.” So that's what she did. She didn't go to the doctor for three years during COVID.

It’s July 1, and we are kicking off Fibroids Awareness Month, which is in July. 

This is the Mini Gel Point. It is tiny, about 3 cm wide, and I use it to gain access into the abdomen. So instead of using a veress needle, I use an open technique and put this little gel point in.

Myomectomy is a procedure where your fibroids are removed, and a hysterectomy is a procedure where the uterus along with the fibroids. Many patients think hysterectomy is a more complicated, difficult, time consuming procedure, but this is not always the case.

Anemia is a medical state where you have low hemoglobin. What is hemoglobin? Hemoglobin is a protein that is found on your red blood cells. The job of hemoglobin is to carry oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body: to your brain, to your heart, to all your legs, your toes, everything.

Women suffering from back pain will see a doctor at some point in their workup. They may get a scan, either a CT scan or an ultrasound, and someone sees a fibroid. And then they come to my office saying, “I have a fibroid and it's causing my back pain.”

And then when I review the scans, I actually find out that it's a tiny fibroid or it's in front of the uterus, not in the back. And then I have to tell the patient, “hey, the fibroid is actually not causing your back pain.”

A lot of the reasons why women bleed very heavily and sometimes irregularly is because the lining of the uterus gets thick. The progesterone IUD works by thinning that lining to the point where there's almost nothing left to shed, which is why a lot of times women will say, “oh, after a few months, I stopped getting my period.” This is because there's no lining to shed.

Depending on their location and size, fibroids can cause various symptoms. Treatment options for fibroids vary depending on their size and location. For more educational videos like this, visit The Fibroid Doc’s YouTube channel.