can polycysts damage ovaries?

[skt68]

Hi All,

I wonder if any of you know if PCOS can damage your ovaries? also can ovarian drilling/ diathermy and ovarian wedge resection also damage ovaries.

Hope you can help, thanks Sarah

[OakTreeBlossom]

I Googled this because I was interested too and I couldn't find anything that says either 'damages' your ovaries.

Polycysts means lots of cysts and many, many women have cysts on their ovaries and live normal lives sometimes unaware of the cysts.

PCOS is the condition that means your hormone levels are all over the place and a symptom of this is that cysts form on the ovaries (it's actually because your homones fire incorrectly and an egg is released at the wrong time in your cycle and gets stuck in the wall lining of your ovary, creating the cyst).

Some sufferers of PCOS have so many cysts (because of this inaccurate firing of hormones) that they have to have their ovaries drilled so eggs may be released for conception. I can find nothing that says the drilling damages the ovary, even though that might sound nonsensical. I would naturally think that interfering like that cannot be completely good, you would have to weigh up the pros and cons in such a procedure.

I'm sure that's as unhelpful as anything but just thought I'd share my opinion!

[skt68 in reply to OakTreeBlossom]

Thankyou so much for this reply, that's very very interesting. Thankyou xxx