Uterine myoma, also known as uterine fibroid, is a benign smooth muscle tumor of the uterus and most common woman' disease.

Many women are noticed of having tumor(s) in the uterus after gynecological examination and most of the cases are the uterine myoma.
25~30% of adult females have uterine myoma with no symptoms thereby they are detected accidentaly during examination.

Benign muscle tumor in the uterine

Uterine myoma is a benign smooth muscle tumor of the uterus and most common woman' disease.
Women in age of 30~45 commonly develop it, however, it may be developed at any age.
It is known, that minimum 20% of women in their childbearing years have uterine myoma.

Causes & Symptoms of Uterine Myoma

The exact cause of uterine myoma is unclear.
However, myomas are dependent on estrogen to grow, thereby it is known, that the size of myomas increases during pregnancy and can be decreased after menopause.

Most common symptom is irregular menstruation, mostly hypermenorrhea of heavy period and atypical colporrhagia of vaginal bleeding when not during period.
Different locations of myomas bring different symptoms.


Subserosal MyomasThey can be felt in abdomen area and make lower abdominal area felt heavy.
If they are felt in abdomen areafrequent urination may be caused by pressing bladder
hydruria may be caused from swollen kidney because of pressed flat ureter
Submucosal MyomasMenorrhalgia, pain in lower abdomen
Intramural MyomasHeavy period or vaginal bleeding when not during period
Generally, uterine myomas are not effective to pregnancy, but uncommonly they cause repeat abortion and lead to abdominal pain and fever.

Diagnosis by Ultrasonography

The most common examination method to diagnosis uterine myomas:

  1. Ultrasonography and also
  2. Hysteroscopy
  3. Laparascopy
    are used
  4. if necessary, number of myomas and their sizes and locaions will be diagnosed by CT examinations

Treatment

Most myomas are benign tumors, thereby they do not require treatment when there is no symptom and the sizes are small. However, they must be determined by specialist and those, who have symptoms such as frequent urination, feeling of residual urine, backache, heavy periods, anemia, menometrorrhagia, repeat abortion and infertility, need to get treatments.

Hormone Therapy

Hormone therapy will be carried out for those women, who want to fertilite, to reduce the size of myomas or decrease bleeding.

However, it must be used for short period, because longer use can cause multiple side effects, including amenorrhea.
Also, medication will not be needed after menopause because myomas will no longer grow.

Surgical Therapy

Myolisis, which reduces the size of myomas and stops their growthwill be performed, depending on the patients' condition
Myomectomy, which removes myomas only or
Hysteroctomy, which removes whole uterus

If the size of myoma is too large or there are multiple myomas, hyterectomy should be performed and it leads to infertility.

Removing uterus can be recogmized as losing womanhood because uterus roles as the origin of life and gender identity for women.

However, it doesn't effect much to the sexual life except there will be no vaginal discharge and the hormones are normally produced because menopause is not happened yet. 

 

 

Cervical Cancer Examination

Papanicolau Smear

Papanicolau Smear (Pap Smear) contributes to early diagnosis of cervical cancer and to lowering frequency of infiltrative cervical cancer occurence. Examination is carried out by collecting secretion from cervix and vagina and dyeing in a special staining solution.

If any abnormality is found from papanicolau smear, biopsy will be carried out for definite diagnosis.

Advantages
No pain and no bleeding.
Patient can go back to everyday life right after the examination.

Cautions
The examination must be done during when there is no menstruation and patient should not take a douche before the examination. It is recommended to female who have experience of sexual intercourse or with age over 20 (except those, who do not have experience of sexual intercourse)

Examination period
once a year


 

Telecervico

Telecervico is an examination method using the principle of colposcope.
It takes photo images of cervix using a specially designed magnification photographic device and a specialist who has qualified as its interpreter deciphers the result.
It can be used as the mass examination method of cervical cancer. If there is atypical cell from the Pap test, it can be used subsidiarily to make therapeutic decision. 


Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) Test

It is carried out to determine whether the patient is infected with the HPV and whether the cancer will be developed. There are more than 80 kinds of HPV.

About 30 kinds of them induce inflection on the cervix from sexual intercourse and around half of them are related to cervical cancer. There is no certain symptom and the inflection will disappear after suppressed existing. In extremely rare cases HPV develops to regular neoplasm in the epithelial cells.


Biopsy

If any abnormal lesions are found from papanicolau smear or colposcopic examination, the cervical cancer is confirmed from the result of biopsy.