Heavy menstrual bleeding also known as MENORRHAGIA is defined as regular bleeding which is abnormally prolonged or heavy (more than 80 ml)

Symptoms

• Heavier periods than normal
• Bleeding more than 1 week
• Passing of clots
• Flooding which require frequent change of sanitary pads (including getting up at night to change)
• Symptoms of anaemia such as shortness of breath or tiredness

Causes

There are many causes but the most common causes are

• Dysfunctional Uterine Bleeding (more than 50%)
• Fibroids
• Pelvic Inflammatory Disease
• Endometriosis
• Uterine polyp / cancer
• Cervical polyp / cancer
• Blood clotting or kidney disorders (rare)

Click to watch the video ‘How to Deal with Heavy Menstrual Flow’ by HowCast

Management

Do keep a diary of your bleeding and non-bleeding days and take note of how heavy your flow was and how much sanitary pads or tampons you needed to control it on a single day.  ALL cases of heavy menstrual bleeding should be seen by a gynaecologist so that you can get a thorough check up and get some of these tests done.

• Blood tests
• Hysteroscopy
• Cervical Cancer Screening test (PAP smear)
• Tissue biopsy
• Ultrasound scan

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