What Can I Expect During and After an Endometrial Ablation?

For years, you’ve struggled with heavy periods that have had a serious impact on your quality of life. Your struggle is, unfortunately, a common one — heavy bleeding affects one in five women who menstruate in the United States.

This explains why more than half a million endometrial ablations, which are primarily designed to control heavy bleeding, are performed each year in the US.

If this is the path you’ve chosen to treat your heavy bleeding, we assure you that you’re in good hands here at Bay Area Physicians for Women’s Health. Our highly skilled and experienced team has performed many endometrial ablations, which is an in-office procedure that has helped scores of women wave goodbye to disruptive menstrual cycles.

Undergoing your endometrial ablation

As we mentioned, an endometrial ablation is a procedure that we can perform right here in our offices. Better still, from start to finish, the endometrial ablation is an incredibly quick procedure that takes us only minutes to complete.

To get started, we first have you change into a treatment gown, and then we make you comfortable on the treatment table. Depending upon your circumstances and the type of ablation procedure, we may use a local anesthetic and/or sedation to help manage any discomfort.

Once you’re ready, we quickly insert a wand through your vagina and into your uterus so that we have access to your endometrium, or the tissues that line your uterus.

With the wand in position, we quickly deliver energy into these tissues that’s designed to destroy the endometrium.

Again, this only takes us minutes, and once we’re done, we remove the wand. After ensuring everything went well on your end, we release you to go home.

After your endometrial ablation

To give you an idea about what early recovery is like after an endometrial ablation, you might experience:

• Mild nausea on the first day
• Cramping for one to three days, which can feel like period pain
• Vaginal discharge for a few weeks, but it mostly occurs during the first one to three days
• More frequent urination for a day or two

These side effects of your endometrial ablation are typically short-lived, and you should be able to get back to your normal routine within a few days. We suggest that you take it easy on the day of your endometrial ablation and the day after.

As for after-care instructions, please avoid inserting anything into your vagina, such as tampons, and avoid intercourse for a few days after your procedure. You should also avoid strenuous exercise for a couple of days, but some light walking is perfectly fine and even encouraged.

If you have questions about what to expect before and after your endometrial ablation, please feel free to contact our office in Mobile, Alabama, where our team members are happy to help.