You may not spend a lot of time thinking about your urinary health, but if something goes wrong with your urinary system, you’ll find yourself giving the topic a great deal of attention.
At Interior Women’s Health, we provide top-quality care for women of all ages, including diagnostic and treatment services for urinary health issues. We’re here to shed some light on one of the tools we use to ensure your urinary function stays healthy.
Your urinary tract includes your kidneys, ureters, bladder, and urethra. All of these components need to function properly to maintain your urinary health. Your kidneys filter your blood to remove toxins and create urine, which moves through your ureters to your bladder.
The bladder is a muscular structure that stores urine until you’re ready to release it. The bladder can expand to hold up to 2 cups of urine at a time. When you urinate, urine travels from your bladder through your urethra and out of your body.
When a problem develops with your urinary function, your specialist needs to determine the cause. Cystoscopy is a type of procedure that uses a medical scope to allow your practitioner to assess your bladder and urethra visually.
If your specialist is planning to perform a biopsy or some form of treatment during your cystoscopy, you might receive sedation or general anesthesia beforehand. But if your cystoscopy is purely being done to look for the source of your urinary health symptoms, you’ll likely only need a numbing gel to keep you comfortable during the procedure.
Once you’re numb, your practitioner inserts the slim cystoscope into your urethra, slowly guiding it into your bladder. Next, a sterile solution fills your bladder to expand the organ and give the best possible view of the internal walls.
The cystoscope functions much like a telescope and provides a magnified view of your internal tissues. Some systems also project images of your internal structures onto a screen to allow for easy viewing.
If your practitioner decides to remove a small tissue sample to check for abnormalities, slim surgical instruments move through the cystoscope to access the area of focus. Your practitioner removes the cystoscope after examining all areas. At that point, you can use the bathroom and empty your bladder.
Cystoscopy is a minimally invasive diagnostic tool that gives your specialist more information about how your body is functioning. Here are some of the issues that might benefit from cystoscopy:
Cystoscopy offers the chance to identify the source of your symptoms and get you started on the right treatment path as quickly as possible.
If you’re experiencing pain or other abnormal changes in your urinary function, don’t hesitate to contact Interior Women’s Health to book a diagnostic exam. Many urinary health problems can worsen if left untreated, which can complicate the treatment process and cause undue discomfort.
Karl Baurick, MD, and Doris Heilman, MD, are here to help get to the bottom of your symptoms and deliver effective treatment options. You’ll learn the ins and outs of all available options, enabling you to make an informed decision about your care.
We offer online booking as well as phone-based scheduling, making it easy to access services when you need them.
