The choice of treatment for symptomatic uterine fibroids reflects the severity of symptoms, the patient's desire to concieve, and patient and physician preferences.
Medical treatments, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories, oral contraceptive pills, and progestins, are aimed at minimizing abnormal menstrual bleeding or controlling pelvic pain. These treatments are associated with minimal cost and risk, but their effectiveness in women with fibroids is limited.
Surgical interventions—myomectomy and hysterectomy—are known to be more effective, but are associated with higher cost and greater risk of morbidity. Abdominal myomectomy and hysterectomy require general anesthesia, lengthy hospital stays and lengthy recovery periods. However, despite the complete symptom resolution achieved in almost all women undergoing hysterectomy for uterine bleeding, many women are unwilling to assume the risks, discomfort, and inconvenience associated with this procedure. The attractiveness of this treatment modality is further diminished by the inevitable loss of child-bearing potential, and even women not desiring future pregnancy may complain of a sense of incompleteness after removal of the uterus(2).
Several other alternatives are available including a variety of laparoscopic, hysteroscopic, and angiographic techniques (uterine artery embolization).

What is uterine artery embolization and who does it?

The uterine artery is the blood supplying artery to the uterus (and the fibroid tumor) and the word embolization means the injection of a material to block these blood vessels and stop the blood flow. This procedure has been used for over twenty years to control various causes of bleeding from the female uterus (e.g. uncontrolled bleeding after child delivery) with good results. But its use in treatment of uterine fibroids started in the year 1995. The procedure is done by physicians specialized in the field of interventional radiology. The procedure belongs to the minimally invasive methods of treatment which means that the treatment is made with the least possible invasiveness unlike surgery which is considered invasive therapy.

 

Document Date: 2007/04/25   Author: Ahmed Koujan

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