Procedure treats fibroid tumors

Debby Rogers sounds a bit like a fired-up evangelist when she talks about one of the better-kept secrets of the gynecologic-health world, a procedure called uterine fibroid embolization.

Instead of invasive surgeries including hysterectomy or myomectomy, an interventional radiologist runs small beads through a catheter into the uterine arteries, cutting off the blood supply to benign tumors called fibroids that in extreme cases like Rogers' can grow to grapefruit size or better.

For eight years, Rogers, a senior producer at KSL TV, battled a condition that included pure misery, uncontrollable bleeding and dangerous anemia. She tried medications, let doctors give her a shot to put her into simulated menopause and contemplated having a hysterectomy before she discovered the procedure, which has been done for almost five years in the Salt Lake Valley, with little fanfare. Even many physicians aren't aware of it, she discovered.

On her journey, one of her physicians discounted it as "experimental" and unproven, though insurance companies cover the cost of the procedure, which has been used for more than a decade in other parts of the country and the world.

Later, she said, one doctor admitted that she just hadn't known enough about it to recommend it.

Uterine fibroids are one of the most common types of benign tumors, their incidence increasing as women age until they reach menopause. It's thought that as many as 80 percent of all women have uterine fibroids, though many of them will never even know it. Most of the time, said Dr. Peter Hathaway of St. Mark's Hospital, an interventional radiologist, the fibroids cause no symptoms and don't need to be treated.

Deseret News graphicUterine fibroid embolizationRequires Adobe Acrobat.

The growths can be inside or outside the uterus but are always connected to the uterus by tissue and blood supply. The type that is just under the uterine lining causes the most bleeding, but is, fortunately, the least common type, said Dr. Michael Webb of McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden, also an interventional radiologist.

No one knows the exact cause of fibroids, though hormones seem to be involved, he said. African-American women are more likely to have symptomatic fibroids than Caucasian women. Because they are "hormonally sensitive tumors," they "regress in a lot of women after menopause."