Spotlight Series

Guest Name: Dr. Mark Dassel | OBGYN

Credentials: OB, GYN

All right, welcome Dr. Dassel. Thank you so much for coming on the spotlight series with us about best in Utah, pelvic health style.

And so I’m just gonna read your bio here for all of our listeners and then we’ll jump into all the fun questions we have.

Great.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, absolutely.

Hey, Dr. Mark Dassel is a fellowship trained minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon with a specialty in treatment of chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, and a variety of other complex gynecological disorders.

He also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Utah, educating residents in OBGYN. He attended medical school at the University of Kentucky, residency in Phoenix, Arizona, and completed a fellowship in minimally invasive gynecologic surgery at the University of Louisville. Since graduation, he has served as faculty at the University of Utah and Cleveland Clinic before joining Intermountain Health Team in 2022.

He has served and currently serves in many educational roles for the fellowship in minimally invasive gynecological surgery and advanced surgical training fellowship in OBGYN and is a board member for the International Pelvic Pain Society. His practice focus is to fully evaluate patients, their medical issues, and come up with a plan to tailor treatments to include quality of life, whether this requires medical, procedural, or surgical treatments.

Amazing.

Thank you so much for being on here, Dr. Dassel. I’m excited to jump in on these questions. And first off the bat, what made you decide to do this? Like what got you down this path?

Yeah, that’s a great question. It certainly wasn’t what I what I jumped off as I certainly when I entered medical school, never had any idea I would be treating OBGYN, never had any idea I’d be treating pelvic pain for sure.

You know, in medical school, you really make a decision whether you want to do a medical treatment or surgical treatments and i always thought i was going to go into internal medicine um but as fate would have it i really when i did my surgical rotations i really enjoyed the fact that you could um you could really get in and just fix something immediately and um and and really liked working with my hands.

And so decided I wanted to do something surgical. Didn’t feel– still had that love for sort of the internal medicine part of it.

And OB/GYN was a good combination. I got into OB/GYN and really thought I was going to go into high risk OB at the beginning. But then again, just really loved the surgery and couldn’t get away from it. So did a minimally invasive guide surgery fellowship.

And was lucky enough to have a really, really excellent mentor at the University of Louisville, Dr. Pasik. And he is an excellent endometriosis surgeon and really, really taught me, you know, I’m no Dr. Pasik, but I taught me those skills and, you know, glad to have done that. in that how it got into really treating pelvic pain was obviously endometriosis is a major cause of pelvic pain. 70% of women with pelvic pain have endometriosis.

So it’s just very common. As I was going through fellowship, I learned how to do these excellent surgeries, but oftentimes these patients would come back with a lot of pain.

And so I reconnected with my, actually someone in my residency, who’s a pelvic pain expert down in Dr. Hibner down in down in Arizona and really pushed myself to really get educated in chronic pelvic pain. And here I am now with a focus mainly in endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain, and then also other complex GYN disorders, as my fellowship would have me do.

Yeah, amazing.

What do you feel like makes you different in what you do and how you do things?

Yeah, I think The treatment of endometriosis, of chronic pelvic pain, is difficult. And it often requires a long period of time really the patients in the time to really spend with patients to discuss exactly what the uh you know what their medical problems are what their experience has been what treatments they’ve used um you know and and furthermore a lot of patients who who i see in my practice have undergone um traumatic experiences whether it be um physical, emotional, sexual trauma, or whether it be trauma just involved with the medical system.

You know, and we know that happens, unfortunately. And I think that that you know, our focus in really trying to put together all of that information and really trying to tailor, really paying attention to sort of, you know, what might be the best evidence-based treatment may not be the best for someone based on what they’ve been through or who they are as a person or some of the barriers that they may have towards treatment.

And I think that’s where our practice excels in really concentrating on finding the, tailoring the right treatment to the right patient. Love that. Love that.

That’s awesome.

Amazing.

Who would you say is like an ideal fit for the complexities that you see? Like as a patient coming in?

Yeah, so, you know, we see patients, I say we because I have an amazing nurse practitioner that works with me, Luce Rennie. And we see patients With all kinds of complex gynecologic conditions, patients with abnormal uterine bleeding and fibroids, patients with vulvodynia, vulvar pain, patients with endometriosis is a very big specialty of ours, and in any chronic pelvic pain from pudendal neuralgia to pelvic congestion syndrome, a variety of pain treatments. And I think the ideal patient for my practice doesn’t have to have been been trying to seek treatment for 20 or 30 years, but we certainly see those patients. But also anyone with pelvic pain, I think is anyone who has painful periods, if they’re not satisfied with their treatment, where they are, we’d love to see those patients.

Yeah, amazing.

Okay. What’s the process look like to work with you? How does someone get in to see you as a specialist?

Yeah. The typically it’s a, I should say, I don’t know, kind of referral based practice. I, if, you know, yeah, that’s been a little bit of a mess, but we try to, you know, I don’t really try to require a referral. I don’t think anyone has to have a referral, but oftentimes I’ll get from patients that they need a referral. It doesn’t have to be from, I mean, it can be from anyone more or less, but, you know, really once we sort of get foot in the door, there is a little bit of a wait. Unfortunately, there’s not tons of us who treat public pain in Utah and in endometriosis as a specialty. And so, you know, there is a little bit of a wait. Sometimes it’s a month or two, sometimes a little bit longer. We’re trying to fix that, but it is difficult. But once sort of through the door, we send a chronic pelvic pain questionnaire. It’s a little bit long, but it’s very helpful to kind of streamline sort of treatments, problems during the visit. ‘Cause we try to address not only the direct problem, but problems that go sort of are related. So someone who comes in with painful periods may then have as you know, in physical therapy, may have a pelvic floor issue, and that can often involve the bowel, the bladder, other more complex nervous system issues, the psychology of having pain for a long time. And we really try to address sort of all those things. Then, you know, we usually have an hour initial appointment and usually 30 minute follow up appointments. Sometimes we’re talking about procedures, trigger point injections, abdominal or vaginal trigger point injections, pelvic floor Botox, which is sometimes done in the office, sometimes done in the OR. Also things like surgeries for endometriosis complex. Endometriosis, deep infiltrating endometriosis, involves the bowel and the bladder and the diaphragm. It’s two more simple, but those patients can have a lot of pain too. And so we really try to manage the breadth of treatment for chronic pelvic pain.

Amazing.

Okay. From your perspective and through your lens of when you do surgical procedures, what does recovery look like on the backside of that?

Yeah, that’s an easy one. I mean, I talk about that every day. – You know, obviously it depends on the procedure. I mean, we do some procedures where, you know, next day you’re back and doing all the things you normally do, things like, you know, Botox injections to the pelvis and those things.

But when you’re talking about, the majority of our surgeries are laparoscopic, I’d say about 99% of my surgeries where we’re entering the belly for surgery, treating endometriosis are going to be laparoscopic. The recovery is typically one to two days on the couch, one to two weeks till you’re doing most of the things you normally do.

The biggest difficulty is usually four to six weeks till you can lift greater than 10 pounds. And in the case of hysterectomy, sometimes pelvic rest for six weeks to even three months, typically six weeks. But that’s sort of mainly, mainly the recovery is pretty quick because laparoscopic surgery, most people are able to get back to what they, what they’re doing pretty quickly.

Amazing.

Hey, what’s something that most people don’t know that you think that they should know, whether it’s about like pelvic pain in general or endometriosis or what you do or like, what’s a, what’s a nugget that you can share with us?

Hmm. Good question.

You know, There’s a few things that come to mind, but I think the number one thing about pelvic pain to remember is a lot of people will be searching for what is the cause of this pelvic pain. And I think there’s a lot of information that people can get from social media, from Google and all of that. And I think it’s actually, I actually did a talk on social media effects on endometriosis.

Because I have a lot of patients who see social media and I kind of went into it thinking there might be a negative side to it. and there is a lot of misinformation out there and so don’t get me wrong it’s not all positive but social media is valuable and and so is google um for learning about these conditions i mean in a in a field such as endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain and pain in general um our medical system is behind the eight ball and we’re not excellent um as a system for sure and i think that um the the use of social media and the use of um even you know just google from respectable sources.

Um can be can be really important and really helpful i mean here we are right now right i mean i think this is going to be on a on a podcast or on you know possibly on a youtube yeah or on that right on a website and and it really can be helpful um and so You know, what I would say to that is, if I get off on that tangent, is that chronic pelvic pain is often not one cause. And when we search on Google and we see quick snippets, we oftentimes see, hey, there’s one cause.

My pain is endometriosis, or my pain is the pelvic floor, or my pain is vulvodynia. a majority of patients I see have more than one diagnosis. If they have endometriosis, that years of painful periods have led to a reactive, tight and painful pelvic floor. And that can change the way the nerves work. And that can cause a painful condition of the vulva called vulvodynia.

And that can lead towards other, what we call chronic overlapping pain syndromes, like um things like migraine headaches and tmj and fibromyalgia and all of those things and i think it’s important that we um that we recognize that earlier we’re able to get to the treatment of any chronic pain syndrome including chronic pelvic pain um the better we do and in the longer we wait the the more we have to really address all of the different issues not just one or two Amen to that.

Right, right. I’m on the same page for sure.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Next question is, do you have anything special that you want to promote to the audience of anything, any sort?

Maybe just that in our practice, we are really passionate about about addressing the the full person and you know i’m not an expert in everything endometriosis everything chronic pelvic pain in terms of um you know there are some things that are that are best for using referrals um uh you know anesthesia or naturopaths or you know in in and all that has a role in treating pelvic pain but You know, I think our, our goal is to really treat, um, in, in to identify all the issues because, you know, I use this example for pelvic pain is that if you have, you know, we talked about, um, you know, endometriosis and vulvodynia and, uh, pelvic floor tension, myalgia.

And if you have, you know, if, if we can get all of those to be dormant, then it helps the treatment in all of the other ones.

I use the example of, if you have five toddlers asleep in a room and one wakes up screaming, so are the other four. And so this is something that we really strive to identify all of the issues and really develop a treatment plan for all of them.

Yeah, love that, love that.

Okay, my last and final question, which I love asking is what is the main thing that you want to be known for?

Oh. You know, I think just that what I sort of, you know, was talking about is that know want to be known as a doctor that listens and doctor that cares and um in someone who’s you know i i love it when a patient has a problem that’s easy to solve but i realize a lot of patients don’t and you know um i want to be known as someone who’s willing to go that extra mile to to work on that treatment and and really try to um you know really try to solve these problems and and if we can’t solve these problems completely at least treat you and and improve um improve quality of life because in the end whether or not there’s pain or not really quality of life is the end goal and if we give you a treatment that makes your quality of life worse but treats your pain that’s not really helping you.

Yeah, awesome.

Well, thank you so much.

Where can we find you? Where do you like you work? Do you have a social media or is it just like come to see me in the office? What does that look like?

I have to admit I’m pretty poor at social media. When I gave that talk about social media, my my last Facebook update still has a picture of my son, who’s now 14 years old.

So that’s how good I am with social media. But no, I mostly to call our office in the mountain, in the mountain health care. I work with the wonderful group of OBGYNs and the inner mountain OBGYN specialties. So that’s how to reach us. You can call the Maine Intermountain Medical Center number.

They’ll hook you up with us. But as far as the social media presence, I can’t say I have that.

That’s okay. That’s okay.

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Dassel, for coming on here and sharing your insight into your world with us. I know that we love working with you. We love collaborating on patient care with you. So thank you so much for what you’re doing in the community here in Utah.

And thank you so much.

I mean, as I often say, you know, there, we really couldn’t do what we do with chronic pelvic pain without excellent pelvic floor physical therapists.

And, you know, I can’t say enough how much that is crucial to our practice. And I, you know, we, I mentioned a lot about us trying to treat all aspects of pelvic floor or all aspects of chronic pelvic pain.

And there’s no question. We need excellent, you know, excellent practitioners to refer to such as yourself. So thank you so much.

Oh, thank you.

I appreciate that. Thanks.