How Bacterial Vaginosis is diagnosed – What your Doctor will do
Before we start, something very important: On my daily excursions on Yahoo answers and similar sites related to women’s health i see many, many women asking for advice online. It is apparent that some women have never been to a gyn before, and some even expect an “online diagnosis” in regards to their condition.
No online chat room or website can give you a diagnosis! If you are the slightest unsure about a condition, please seek medical advice right away. Only a doctor can perform tests to decide whether you have bacterial vaginosis, a yeast infection or any other condition. There is no reason to be afraid or shy. The doctor is there to diagnose and help you!
That being said, here is what your doctor will usually do:
Let’s say you experience unusual vaginal discharge, itching, the works. The doctor will ask some routine questions, for example about your medical background, and he will ask other questions to find out whether we are dealing with a more serious condition. He will ask whether you have pelvic pain or fever, he might ask some basic questions like whether you are sexually active or not and whether there is a medical history of STDs.
He will do a pelvic exam and he will check your cervix and vaginal lining, your ovaries and your uterus. Tenderness in the cervix might indicate a serious infection. He then might collect samples and swabs, checking for various STD infections like gonorrhea or chlamydia.
The doctor will examine the discharge to see whether you have a yeast infection (candida) or bacterial vaginosis. He is looking for a certain kind of cells which indicate vaginosis. Those cells are called “clue cells”. He will also check the vaginal pH since a high pH > 4.5 is indicative of BV.
There is also a special test where he uses potassium hydroxide in conjunction with the discharge to make sure we’re dealing with a vaginosis.
If all those conditions are met the doctor can make a positive diagnosis about whether you have bacterial vaginosis or not.
Only after you have consulted a doctor you should start a treatment. It would be wrong to post-pone any visit at the gyn and instead ask in online chat rooms since no advice given online can be a substitute those tests! This is especially important since yeast infection and bacterial vaginosis are so similar with their symptoms. Both conditions need very different methods of treatment since BV is a bacterial infection, and yeast infection is not.
Any untreated vaginosis (as is the case with ANY infection) can turn into something more serious, so it is really important to seek professional advice right away and not waste time. It’s your health and what could be more important?
Chrysten