Standfirst: Vaginoplasty, a surgery done to tighten the vagina, has made
medicine cross over to the realm of aesthetics in recent years. Dr
Christopher Chong gives you an insight on this trend.
I'm certainly seeing more patients requesting for vaginoplasty these days.
Some of them do it for themselves, while others do it for their partners.
Understandably, if sex reaches the "no fun" stage, their relationship can be
affected.
Many of these patients have prolapsed pelvic organ. Let me share with you
an interesting finding: a search on "vaginal cosmetic surgery" on internet
portals Yahoo and Google revealed hundreds of websites dedicated to this
topic. Yet, a similar search on Medline � for online medical journals and
research � turned up none. This may simply be a matter of different
terminologies, but the objective and outcome are likely to be the same.
Before you learn how vaginoplasty is done, you need to know what drives it.
The pelvic floor muscles in women control the three organ systems � namely
the bladder, womb and bowel, which are lined up in this order. When one
organ system is damaged, it's likely that the neighbouring organs are
affected as well.
The three main culprits behind damaged pelvis floor muscles are pregnancy
/childbirth, menopause and obesity. On the other hand, some women are born
with weak collagen muscle tissues and have a lax vagina even at a young age
and without having gone through childbirth.
Culprit: Childbirth
The usual damage is, of course, from pregnancy and childbirth. The baby's
head going through the vagina can cause overstretching and tearing of the
pelvic floor muscles. It's even worse for patients who do not do Kegel's
exercise during pregnancy and post delivery. Many women are unaware that
this exercise can reduce or prevent pelvic floor damage.
To find out if damage has been done, a doctor may put an index finger into
the vagina and a thumb into the anus, and pinch them together. If there's a
hollow in between, it's likely to be due to the damage in the pelvic floor
muscles and in the "perineal body" tissue located in the region. This is a
common problem caused by poorly healed or poorly cut (episiotomy) vagina
after childbirth. It gives that open vulva/vagina feeling to the patient and
her partner, which is why complaints like "looseness", "no strength", "no
sensation" and "no fun" are often heard.
Relatively safe
In Vaginoplasty, I repair the perineal body tissue and join the pelvic floor
muscles with sutures. The vaginal skin will be fashioned according to
preferred tightness of the pelvic floor muscles. This surgery can be done as
a day procedure, with minimal pain and complications, and with a good
success rate under skilled hands. Generally, I do not cut away vaginal skin
unless it's excessive, because the complication that comes after it is that
of painful intercourse. Any prolapsed problem must be corrected at the same
time. This is an attempt at achieving "a tight fit" to improve stimulation
of the vulval and vaginal tissues. It's not far fetched to get her partner
to go for "fitting", but very often, he's not willing to do so.
Vaginoplasty can be done with or without the use of laser but the principles
of surgery remain the same. Complications like bleeding and infection are
rare. Some women may get scarred, and coupled with the over tightening or
cutting of the vaginal skin, sex can end up becoming a nightmare instead of
a pleasure.