Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome - How To Handle It?

Hello friends!

I am Dr. Neelam Pandey. I am consultant endocrinologist and today I'll be speaking on polycystic ovarian syndrome. As we all know it is a very common problem which is seen in our female population and here we know that there are a small cyst in the ovary and they lead to a lot of hormonal turbulence. Females can present with especially in the reproductive age group this is seen and the female and the teenagers and young ladies they complain of acne, facial hair or body hair like which we call hirsutism and they may also complain of irregular cycle, sometimes it is very delayed as good as amenorrhoea like they don't have a cycle for 3,3 4,4 months and these patients are also prone to diabetes, these patients are also prone to obesity and lipid disorders, cholesterol issues. So, identification of these patients is very essential because they have the threat to become one-third of the patient may become diabetic sooner or later and this has a lot of implications over the fertility also. Not everyone but few cases at least 15 to 20% cases may have issues in difficulty in going ahead with the pregnancy.

So, this is important, this should be checked, this should be identified. So, with the help of when you see an endocrinologist, they will examine you, they will look at your clinical condition, they have some specific scoring system for facial and other things and accordingly they plan a treatment for you and management for you; so, a battery of blood tests are being done, hormonal test profile is done along with that sugar is also checked and other parameters like testosterone levels these are being checked in blood and there is one ultrasound pelvis is being done so as to see the polycystic ovary and we follow specific criteria and after labelling and excluding other similar diseases such as we rule out hypothyroidism, we try to rule out of prolactin disorders, there are other androgen secreting glands in the body such as adrenal glands; so we try to rule out those disorders by a list of investigations.

All these, once are excluded and we know that this is the case of PCOD which we are dealing with, then treatment is told to them which is largely lifestyle modification, which is that you have to control your weight and you have to do regular exercise which we all know we should be doing it otherwise also but in this case it is definitely a sort of definitive management. So, you have to control your lifestyle largely and regular walk, low carb diet, low fat diet has to be followed and weight loss is the key but there are 10% chances of lean PCOD in which they're already lean but still diet and lifestyle modification, low carb diet is the key and then we also give sometimes hormonal and non-hormonal medication depending on the need because all the PCOD female patients may not have similar triad. They may have certain group might have just an irregular cycle; they may not have acne and hirsutism. The other group may have a regular cycle and they may have hirsutism and acne. So, accordingly as per your test and clinical condition, your treatment is chopped out and you keep yourself fit on whatever medications advised by your doctor. So it is very much possible, so instead of getting worried about the illness, look for a solution and fix your health.

Thank you so much!