Venous health and pelvic pain

Memphis Vascular Center not only focuses on your legs, but your overall venous health. Poor venous flow can also cause pelvic pain. MVC offers treatment options for pelvic congestion syndrome.  Memphis Vascular is the first Nationally Accredited Memphis Vein Center.  For more information or question please contact us at 901-683-1890 or email us.

Pelvic Pain? Pelvic Congestion Syndrome Symptoms and treatment options

 

Pelvic Congestion Syndrome (PCS) is an under-recognized cause of chronic pelvic pain. Like other vein diseases, it occurs more frequently in women, but does occur in men.

It is caused by reflux or backwards flow of blood in the veins in and around the pelvis. These include the veins that drain blood from the testes, or in women from the ovaries and the uterus and the other peri-pelvic veins.

This reflux leads to increased pressure in those veins, and over time these veins dilate and become varicose in a similar fashion to the more commonly recognized varicose veins we see on the legs.

Symptoms of PCS include chronic pelvic pain, and can also include pain with intercourse, pain with urination, unusually painful periods, and pain that may be made worse by sitting or standing, and improved with lying down. The pain is usually felt in the low abdomen or low back.

In women, recognized risk factors include two or more pregnancies, polycystic ovaries, and disorders of hormone balance. Diagnosis is made using ultrasound or more commonly CT scan and/or MRI scan or a dye test called a venogram.

Treatment includes hormone therapy, or for severe or persistent symptoms surgery with hysterectomy and ovary removal or tying off the veins is sometimes performed. Embolization of the internal varicose or refluxing veins is increasingly used with success, and involves inserting tiny coils and often a chemical irritant into the vein to close it off.

For visible pelvic veins chemical vein injections or sclerotherapy is a readily available treatment and many people get improvement of symptoms with this therapy as well.

If you have chronic pelvic pain, especially if worse with prolonged standing or associated with any of the symptoms outlined above, you should talk to your primary care provider or gynecologist about your symptoms. Most vein specialists are tuned in to this syndrome and can help guide the work up and evaluation as well as treatment.