Prolonged menstrual bleeding can be caused by various factors, including medication, IUDs, miscarriage, and menopause. Women with consistent prolonged bleeding should seek medical advice and undergo tests to rule out serious conditions such as fibroids, endometriosis, or cancer. Treatment options range from removing an IUD to hormone therapy or surgery, depending on the underlying cause.
Normal days of menstrual flow vary, and anything between two and seven days is considered regular. If a woman has prolonged menstrual bleeding, the “periodic” part of the cycle lasts more than seven days, and the flow can be heavy or light. Occasionally, any woman can experience an eighth or even ninth day of menstrual bleeding, and one or two lifetime incidences of this are not indicative of problems. On the other hand, if prolonged menstrual flow occurs often, women should seek the advice of a doctor.
There are some benign things that cause prolonged menstrual bleeding. These include using large amounts of aspirin during periods. Even women who have the non-hormonal type of IUD can experience this symptom regularly. Miscarriage early in a pregnancy can also lead to a prolonged period. Also, as women approach menopause, some may have longer than normal periods.
A consistent history of prolonged menstrual bleeding usually means a doctor will run several tests to rule out some things that are more serious. In addition to taking a medical history to determine exactly how long your periods last, doctors are likely to do a gynecological exam and pap smear. They may order an ultrasound to look for abnormalities in the uterus such as endometriosis or fibroids and want to screen for uterine cancer. It’s not uncommon for doctors to also do blood tests to look at blood counts, hormone levels, and thyroid function, as low thyroid levels can cause this condition.
Not much can be done about prolonged menstrual bleeding until an accurate diagnosis is made. For a woman with an IUD, the simple solution may be to remove the device and possibly switch to a progestogen-releasing type which tends to shorten cycle length. If no tests indicate any medical problems, one of the most common methods of treating this condition is hormone treatment, which can regulate your periods. This may not be recommended for a perfectly healthy woman who is clearly pre-menopausal. Indeed, provided that there is no underlying cause that needs treatment and that the flow does not create problems such as anemia or general inconvenience, no treatment could be recommended.
In some cases, prolonged menstrual bleeding is symptomatic of larger problems, such as the presence of fibroids, endometriosis, or cancerous or precancerous conditions in the cervix or uterus. In these cases, these conditions could be treated with a variety of methods. The most aggressive treatment surgically removes the uterus, and the least aggressive might be to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, which is mostly used with small fibroids. Any precancerous state cannot be treated with hormones as this could cause the cancer to grow.
Because this condition has so many causes, the best thing to do if you have prolonged menstrual bleeding that occurs regularly is to see a doctor. It is impossible to say what, from an individual point of view, is right for each person. The matter is best managed with the attention and diagnosis of an experienced physician.
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