Up to half of women of childbearing age may have fibroids. More than 200,000 U.S. women have hysterectomies each year because of fibroids. The newest treatment, embolization, has been used successfully for more than 20 years to treat heavy bleeding after childbirth. It was first used for fibroids in 1991 in Paris, where doctors noticed that fibroids shrank in patients who had embolization for postoperative bleeding. At the end of 1998, about 2,000 fibroid embolizations had been done worldwide.
Studies show that the procedure decreases recovery time and reduces symptoms of fibroids.
At the annual meeting of the Society of Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology recently, Dr. James Spies, vice chairman of radiology at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, said that 89 percent of his 61 patients who have had uterine embolization had less menstrual bleeding and that 96 percent had less pelvic pain. The tumor sizes shrank by half, on average, he said. In the six years that patients have been followed, Spies said, none has grown new fibroids. Three percent of women suffered complications, such as injury to the uterus and infertility. The treatment failed in less than 1 percent of women, who then needed to have hysterectomies, he said.