Patient's question:
My wife is 28 years old this year and has been pregnant for over a month. Before getting pregnant, my wife had a health check-up at the hospital and discovered she had uterine fibroids. She doesn't know if this will affect her pregnancy. The small thing is the size of a fist, and she worries whether it will affect the normal growth and development of the child.Doctor's answer:
This depends on the size, location, and growth rate of the uterine fibroid. The location where the uterine fibroid grows can lead to varying degrees of control symptoms. The presence of uterine fibroids during pregnancy affects both early pregnancy and labor. Submucosal fibroids can obstruct the implantation of the fertilized egg or cause early miscarriage. Larger intramural fibroids may lead to miscarriage during early pregnancy due to mechanical obstruction or uterine cavity deformity. During pregnancy, the uterus becomes engorged with blood, tissues swell, and smooth muscle cells hypertrophy, causing the fibroid to significantly shrink. As labor approaches, the fibroid gradually increases in size. A rapidly shrinking fibroid during pregnancy may undergo red degeneration, resulting in severe abdominal pain accompanied by nausea, vomiting, fever, and a decrease in white blood cell count.