What are treatment options for pelvic organ prolapse?
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Jun 1, 2015
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Dr. William Rush discusses treatment options for pelvic organ prolapse.
What are treatment options for pelvic organ prolapse?
When I see a woman in the office for pelvic organ prolapse I always give them three options. The first option is to continue to monitor symptoms. If it's not interfering too much with her life or her symptoms aren't too bad that's usually what they choose to do. The second option is a pessary. A pessary is a plastic or rubber device usually made of silicon. We place it inside the office and it helps to support the vaginal tissues. It can really help relieve a lot of the symptoms from prolapse of the pressure and feeling like things are dropping down. The third option is surgery. For surgery, there's a few different ways that we can do it. But no matter how we do it the patients usually spend just one night in the hospital and are able to leave the next day. We will be able to perform it in a minimally invasive way, either laparoscopically, through a very small incisions in the belly about the size of my fingertip or, through the vagina. And so either way it's not too invasive usually and not of a large incision incision on their belly with any kind of huge recovery, although it is surgery, and that's the downside of surgery. Pessary the advantage is it's not surgery, but sometimes it has some limitations to getting the right fit.