Painful fibroids can be surgically removed
Published: Monday, July 8, 2013 at 02:09 PM.
In a myomectomy, the fibroid is cut from the uterine wall. Myomectomy allows a woman to keep her entire uterus in case she wants to have children. In some cases, a traditional surgical approach is needed. The doctor makes a large incision in the lower abdomen, sees the uterus directly and cuts out the fibroids.
Often a less invasive procedure, laparoscopic surgery, can be done. A flexible tube or scope is placed through those incisions. At the end of the scope is a light, a camera and surgical instruments that the doctor can manipulate. Instead of seeing the uterus and fibroids directly, the doctor sees them on a video monitor and watches the surgery she is doing on the monitor. Because laparoscopic procedures are less invasive, people recuperate faster.
In a hysteroscopic resection, a viewing instrument called a hysteroscope is inserted into the uterus through the vagina. Surgical instruments attached to the hysteroscope remove fibroids growing inside the uterus.
In the X-ray-guided procedure called uterine artery embolization, material is injected into the arteries that provide blood to the fibroids. Starving the fibroid of blood shrinks it.
Hysterectomy involves the removal of the uterus. Once the uterus is removed, a woman can no longer bear children.
Fibroids often shrink on their own after menopause, because they no longer have enough female hormones to grow.
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