November 16th, 2009
If you encounter a doctor abdominal pain should want to follow this issue. If it shall not follow this line in question, according sure answers to these questions to the health care provider in any case they do not ask or weather. Try as much as possible to answer these questions.
If your with acute (new or sudden onset) abdominal pain, it might very serious or something as simple as gas that will pass.
* Gas indigestion / pains
*Constipation
* Menstrual cramps, or
* Gall bladder pain
* Bladder or kidney infection
* Pelvic inflammatory disease
* Endometriosis
* Ectopic (tubal) pregnancy
* Appendicitis
* Ovarian cysts
* Ulcers
* Prostatitis
* Other rare conditions presenting with abdominal pain: angina pectoris, myocardial infarction, abdominal aneurysm, pericarditis, pancreatitis, hepatitis, certain tumors.
How do you answer the questions that follow will help you toto determine what could be the cause. It may help to print this page, and write down the answers to take on when you see a doctor. Some issues are specific to women.
___ When was the first day of your last period? This is usually the first question. They are also asked whether it was was a "normal" time: the flow heavy or light? Was it on time, early or late? If you may be pregnant or trying to get pregnant, you say it right away.
___ What areYou use for contraception? Be honest, if you do not regularly use contraceptives. Your Nurse Practitioner may also ask open questions to your partner (s) and other high-risk behaviors. These questions can not be persuaded to embarrass or offend, but they should help to make a proper diagnosis and appropriate medical tests carried out.
___ Severity: On a scale of 1 to 10 how bad the pain? If you made the birth, how is it compared to the labor? How about compared to the menstrual cycleCramps? Or it is like anything you've ever felt before, or if you had this pain before?
___ Location: Where is the pain now? Where was it when it began? Think of your abdomen split into 9 sections (like a tic-tac-toe board), or "regions". Several conditions are typically characterized by the location of their pain. Some pain "diffuse" means what it's all about the stomach, while other localized pain in the upper half of the abdomen or the lower half.
___ Referral: Hasthe pain to go to another place? For example, it starts somewhere specific and then radiate elsewhere?
___ Quality: Is the pain sharp, dull (like a toothache), "boring" (eg, as a bull horn goes through you), burning, cramping, or simply overwhelming? If you had this kind of pain before, as it is this time be different? What do you get out of it? Have you tried that already?
___ Timing / Duration: How long have you had the pain? Is this the first time that this hadcertain kind of pain or you have this before? When? What were you doing when the pain started this time? Is it to wake from sleep? It seems to occur about the same conditions (in particular food, the time of the month, after certain activities, etc.)? Does it come / go or is it all the time in nature? If so, how much alcohol you drink () regularly or sporadically? Describe your diet, especially spicy or fatty foods. Did you binge eat or make themselves vomit?
___ What does itbetter / worse, what does it do? These include movements, positions, movement, sex, food, drugs (prescription, over the counter, and illegal), bowel movements or passing gas, vomiting, etc.
___ What do you have other symptoms in addition to the pain? This includes everything simply not normal for you: Increased or decreased appetite, fever, chills, changes in your bowel or bladder habits (constipation, diarrhea, increased or decreased urination, burning) with urination, blood,from anywhere (stool, urine, vagina, nose), pain elsewhere in your body, dizziness or fainting.
Enter consider these questions because the answers to these simple questions can actually lead you to or away from various tests (both invasive and non-invasive) and in the most serious cases, surgery.