On International Women’s Day, women celebrate womanhood, motherhood, and achievements. Our society relates womanhood to menstrual cycle. But what one needs to understand is that, there are many aspects to celebrate beyond menstrual cycle. In fact, I would like to highlight many woman achievers are women beyond 50 years who are completely mature enough to contribute to the society productively. In this scenario I would like to highlight, there is a condition when women stop menstruating quite early in life due to complete bankruptcy of the eggs in the ovary resulting in loss of the hormone estrogen. The irony in these women is their physiological age would be very less, but their biological age would be more. This particular condition is called “Premature Ovarian Failure” or “Premature Menopause”. It affects about 1-2% of women under the age of 40 years. Its prevalence shows some variations across population of women, but overall represents a condition that is neither rare nor common. It is rare enough that women searching for doctors with extensive knowledge of this condition may be frustrated, depending upon their geographic locations. Fortunately, it is common enough so that women who suffer from this condition can find each other, and share their condition and experiences, motivate one another, and help drive the conversation about best practices and treatment for women with premature ovarian failure or premature menopause. In my practice, in fact I have encountered many such women who most of the time are present for fertility treatment. Many times, it becomes a surprise not for the woman but also for us because these are really young women, as young as 25-26 years also. Only while evaluating these women for fertility treatment, we come to understand their ovary is bankrupt and devoid of eggs. There are lucky few who have come with just few eggs left and for whom we have offered IVF and have conceived. There are few who were unfortunate and do not have even those few eggs and we had to offer them donor eggs and IVF to get them pregnant. Apart from fertility point of view these women need care of bone, heart, and other systems to lead the rest of their life healthy. Science have evolved, so is technology which also have helped many of our women. There are few for whom we offer ovarian and endometrial rejuvenation by injecting platelets rich plasma (PRP) and stem cells laparoscopically into the ovary and hysteroscopically into the endometrium and helped them. With proper treatment, most women with such a condition states that
“I was so relieved to find out that I hadn’t aged 15 years, only my ovaries had decided to shut down early, so I have decided to take care of my health early in life, have children, grandchildren and have a good quality of life”
Dr. Mala Raj Endoscopic Surgeon Fertility Specialist Managing Director Firm Hospitals drmalaraj@gmail.com 80562 25577
