Completing Illustrations for a Surgeon Treating Women’s Pelvic Disorders
Dr. Shashoua is a surgeon and owner of Austin Urogynecology, a clinic treating women with pelvic disorders based in Texas, USA. Dr. Shashoua specialisess in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery treating urogynecological conditions including urinary incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, bowel incontinence and vulvar vestibulitis for women.
Dr. Shashoua commissioned us to create a range of custom medical illustrations and our role was to come up with unique illustrations that would show the treatment involved for women with pelvic disorders. This is because women can suffer from stress incontinence which is the leaking of urine when sneezing for example caused by a weakening of the muscles and connective tissues that work to support the bladder and the urethra, as well as urge incontinence which is having to rush to the toilet at short notice. Conditions also include vaginal or organ prolapse which is where the organs drop below their normal anatomical setting and cause a bulge or heaviness occurring in the vagina or lower abdomen.
Dr. Shashoua specialising in treating sufferers with prolapse conditions such as enterorocele, which is prolapse of the small bowel, rectocele which is prolapse of the rectum, cystocele which is prolapse of the bladder, perineal decent which is prolapse or weakness of the pelvic floor muscles. Our task was to create medical illustrations demonstrating these conditions to be used as part of web and printed patient education materials for patients to refer to when seeking advise about their condition.