PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome)

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Pulkit Nandwani. I'm a gynecologist and a laparoscopic surgeon practicing in Rohini Delhi. Today I want to share some information with you about Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.

What is polycystic ovaries?    

These days polycystic ovary syndrome is becoming extremely common. It is increasing in incidence. Nowadays every 2 in 10 women will be having this syndrome. Polycystic ovaries are nothing but ovaries slightly larger in size than the normal looking ovaries. The small cysts form in these ovaries which cause some hormonal disturbances. So having a diagnosis of polycystic ovaries on ultrasound does not mean that you have polycystic ovary in ovarian syndrome. Polycystic ovarian syndrome occurs only when a patient is experiencing symptoms along with an ultrasound diagnosis of polycystic ovaries.

Now what can be the symptoms that occur in polycystic ovarian syndrome?

The symptoms are usually due to the hormonal changes, means that you can either have irregular periods, heavy bleeding or their can be on period at all, then may be increase in body hair increase in facial hair specially and loss of hair on the head. Then their can be weight gain. Patient can become overweight. It can affect the fertility difficulty in conceiving as well as oily skin acne under and also because the polycystic ovarian syndrome. Then their can also be some psychological disturbances. Your patient can experience mood swings and depression. All because of the hormonal changes or polycystic ovaries.

What are the causes of polycystic ovary syndrome?

Cause of polycystic ovarian syndrome is as such not yet known. It is just seen to run in a hereditary fashion. If your mother or elder sister experience problems of this kind you are also likely to have polycystic ovarian syndrome. Now other than these syndrome discussed earlier, you can also experience a lot of long-term consequences on health because of polycystic ovarian syndrome. These patients are more likely for having heart diseases later on in life, very high chances diabetes and blood pressure is there and even higher chances of uterine cancers, developing cancer of the lining of the uterus.

Now how can we reduce the effects of polycystic ovarian syndrome. As such there is no cure for the polycystic ovarian syndrome. We have medical treatment but better than that is to have a healthy lifestyle. Polycystic ovaries respond a lot to just having a healthy lifestyle which includes losing weight. If a patient is overweight, the first advice that we give to the patient is to lose a weight even a minimum weight loss of 3 to 5 kgs makes a drastic decrease in the even appearance of polycystic ovaries and betterment of hormones. So having a healthy lifestyle means eating lots of fruits and vegetables, cutting down on junk food. Losing weight in the form of activity having exercised makes a difference in the treatment itself. Along with that any other medical requirement is that then we have some hormonal tablets which can be started to cure the bleeding problems as well as we start them to help the patient to try to conceive. For the long term effects, just having a healthy lifestyle and having a control on weight having regular checkups with a general practitioner. Having the regular checkups of sugar to rule out diabetes or blood pressure and then annual screening for cancer can reduce the effects of polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Thank you I hope the information was useful for you.

If you have any queries regarding that you can always contact me on lybrate.