UTERINE FIBROIDS: PATHOGENESIS, EPIDEMIOLOGY AND ITS CLINICAL MANIFESTATIONS ON HUMAN ENDOMETRIUM FUNCTIONING

Uterine fibroids consist of smooth muscle cells and connective tissue.Growth is stimulated by estrogen.Fibroids arise during reproductive years, grow during pregnancy, and regress after menopause.Growth spurt can happen in premenopausal years-an ovulatory cycles with irregular relative estrogen excess.Prevalence estimates for uterine fibroids indicate that they affect 5.4% to 77% of women, depending on the method of diagnosis.A fibroid can be very small and difficult to feel, especially in an obese woman, or as large as a watermelon.Most gynecologists do not consider fibroids a problem until they are the size of a 12-week pregnancy or are causing significant symptoms, such as bleeding and painful menstruation.Hysterectomy has been the procedure of choice for large fibroid tumors.Approximately 300,000 hysterectomies are performed per year for fibroid tumors.Hysterectomy is not a benign procedure; in 1975, 1700 deaths occurred in the 787,000 hysterectomies performed.