All About Endometrial Ablation

You dread your period each month, as the bleeding is excessive enough that it has a significant effect on your quality of life. In short, you’re tired of being a prisoner to heavy menstrual bleeding or long periods and you want to put a stop to the problem.

At Women’sClinic of the Rio Grande Valley, Dr. Fernando Otero and our experienced team offer an effective solution for heavy and/or abnormal bleeding — endometrial ablation.

In this month’s blog post, we take a look at this minimally invasive gynecologic procedure and how it can restore your quality of life.

Defining heavy or abnormal bleeding

Under normal circumstances, the lining of your uterus thickens each month in anticipation of hosting a fertilized egg. When fertilization doesn’t occur and an embryo doesn’t implant, this lining sheds out so your uterus can prepare for the next ovulation cycle, which is what creates your period.

While most women experience 3-7 days of mild-to-moderate bleeding, some women experience heavy bleeding or periods that last longer than 7 days. When we say heavy bleeding, we mean that your period produces more than ⅓ cup of blood, which leads to:

• Soaking through tampons or pads every hour or two
• Needing more than one pad or using both a tampon and a pad
• Needing to get up during the night to change tampons or pads

As well, some women who experience heavy bleeding also develop anemia due to the blood loss.

How an endometrial ablation can help

If you’re experiencing life-changing menstrual cycles, we may first try to tackle the problem through medications and hormonal controls. If these measures prove ineffective, we may recommend an endometrial ablation.

With an endometrial ablation, we remove the lining of your uterus, which typically stops or considerably lightens your periods.

The most important point we want to make about an endometrial ablation is that we only perform this procedure if you’re sure you don’t want to get pregnant in the future. In removing the thin tissue that lines your uterus, we reduce your ability to get pregnant.

That said, you still can get pregnant, but the outcome of such a pregnancy is generally not favorable, which is why you need to ensure that you practice adequate birth control after your endometrial ablation.

After your endometrial ablation

When we perform an endometrial ablation, we don’t make any incisions, but go in through your vaginal canal to reach your uterus. In most cases, an endometrial ablation takes us only minutes to perform and you’re free to return home afterward.

While we send you home with complete aftercare instructions, we want to quickly review what you can expect after your endometrial ablation. For the first few days, you may experience cramping and considerable discharge. These side effects shouldn’t last long, but you should plan on taking it easy for a day or two.

Once the immediate side effects of the endometrial ablation subside, you should enjoy very light or no periods moving forward and until you pass through menopause.

If you want to learn more about an endometrial ablation, please contact one of our two offices in McAllen or Edinburg, Texas, to schedule a consultation.