I had an ultrasound of my pelvic and abdomen area the other day. Everything came back normal except the ovaries could not be visualized. Is this something to be concerned about? Has this ever happened to anybody? I had a transabdominal ultrasound which is external, and that was done on a full bladder. I then had a transvaginal ultrasound which is too see the uterus and ovaries better. There are times that we cannot visualize the ovaries with either transvaginal or transabdominal ultrasound. I am unsure if any of these fit your situation, and I mean no disrespect, but here it goes.....
Gas in the intestines can make it difficult to see the ovaries. Everyone has gas or air in their intestines, and the intestines are situated in the same area as the ovaries. Air effectively blocks the ultrasound beam, so nothing behind that air can be seen.
An obese patient is harder to scan, because when the ultrasound beam has to penetrate a lot of tissue, it has weakened by the time it gets deep enough to see the organs.
Post menopausal ovaries can be hard to find with ultrasound. Young ovaries are like grapes....fat and juicy. Older ovaries are more like raisins....smaller and dried up! Those young, juicy ovaries are easier to see.
If the uterus is large (due to past pregnancies or fibroids, for example), the ovaries are pushed further towards your sides, instead of nearer the midline of your body. If the ovaries are situated further out, they are harder to see. With transabdominal ultrasound, we use the bladder to help us see the ovaries. If the ovaries are not somewhat near the bladder, we might not see them. With transvaginal ultrasound, the ovaries need to be somewhat near the cervix. The transvaginal transducer (or camera) cannot see things unless they are within a certain distance from the cervix. It has a limited distance of penetration.
The good news is that if you had ovarian cysts or a large mass on the ovaries, they would be hard to miss. When we cannot see the ovaries, we can be relatively sure that they are small and grossly normal. Your doctor might ask you to do another ultrasound, at some other point. In any event, this is not an abnormal situation, and it does happen to patients, from time to time. I had an ultrasound done several years ago in the ER....they had to put a cathetor in and fill up the bladder to push the ovaries into view..did they do this?? If not that is probably the reason the ovaries were not seen on an external ultrasound. Ditto Erin's answer. They couldn't find my left one but found my right one. They said that sometimes the bowel is full and they can't see the ovary..Why did you have it done in the first place? If the were looking for tumors or something like that I would hope that they would try again or try a catscan or something like that. |
