By: Lee Peterson When doctors told Victoria Overton she needed a hysterectomy, she balked. She wanted to know the alternatives. But her first- and second-opinion gynecologists gave her no options. To them, a large uterine fibroid on her uterus meant that the entire organ would have to be removed. The benign tumor was causing problems: […]

By: Bruce McLucas, MD, FACS, Louis Adler, MD, Rita Perrella, MD JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF SURGEONS January 2001 Volume 192 pp. 95-105 Summary BACKGROUND: Earlier studies demonstrated the efficacy of uterine fibloid embolization (UFE). We seek to demonstrate the success of the procedure in a community hospital setting, and we attempt to identify […]

Alternative Fibroid Treatment Despite a decades-old debate over its medical necessity, hysterectomy is still the most common non-obstetrical major surgery performed on women in the United States. By the time a woman reaches age 60, the chances are about 1 in 3 that she will have had her uterus removed, and possibly her ovaries as […]

By: Kathleen Fackelmann NEW YORK (AP) — Arleen Chatman’s mother had a hysterectomy. Her grandmother had a hysterectomy. So did her sister, two aunts and a cousin, who was only 32 when the family problem uterine fibroids struck her as they do millions of women every year. Chatman, 57, was determined to buck her history, […]

By: Bruce McLucas, S.C. Goodwin and D. Kaminsky MIN INVAS THER & ALLIED TECHNOL 1999 Volume 7 No. 3 pp. 267-271 Summary Embolization of the uterine arteries, used for many types of pelvic haemorrhage, recentiy has been successfully applied to women suffering from myomata uterus. As a side effect of embolisation, myomata shrink more than […]

New Techniques Expand Treatment Options to Help Women Avoid Major Surgery By Gail McBride, Special to The Washington Post April 6, 1999 They may affect up to half of women of childbearing age and can cause bleeding, pain and perhaps infertility. Yet until recently, medical research paid scant attention to those benign growths in the […]

In the early 1990s, Jacques H. Ravina first applied the technique of embolization of uterine arteries to treat uterine fibroids in women at high risk for complications during surgery in an effort to control uterine bleeding. Embolization was then expanded for the treatment of patients who were undergoing myomectomy in order to decrease intraopertive bleeding. […]