As an IVF doctor, I'm still quite amazed by how little, even highly educated women understand about how their reproductive organs work and how little they understand about their menstrual cycles and fertility. For example, one of the common misconceptions which women have is about ovarian cysts.

These are very common and we find them in most women of the reproductive age groups. Most of these are physiological cysts or functional cysts. After all, every mature ovarian follicle in fact is actually just a small cyst, because a follicle contains a mature egg surrounded by follicular fluid.

It’s very hard to distinguish the different types of cysts based on ultrasound scans, except for their size, and whether they have echoes or not. And because a lot of women these days get routine ultrasound scans done as part of their routine health checkup, a lot of them will find they have cysts. Many of these will often be misreported as having polycystic ovarian disease ( PCOD), as a result of which these women will start panicking and start thinking that they have fertility issues.

And some doctors are very trigger-happy and want to do surgery to remove the cyst. They scare the patient, and take advantage of their ignorance and gullibility, by saying that the cyst may become larger or burst if nothing is done. And it's very hard to explain to patients that they need to educate themselves a lot more, and can't afford to just leave everything up to a doctor who happens to have a medical degree. It's equally important that they understand that it's their body and it's their responsibility to do their own homework. I understand why so many of them get frustrated by doing Google searches because Google searches have now been completely corrupted by a lot of ads and there's so much unreliable information available online. The secret is to go to a reliable website, such as www.drmalpani.com or www.webmd.com. Armed with this information, you can ask intelligent questions to your doctor, so you don't start panicking unnecessarily when the ultrasound scan shows you have a cyst!