Embolization Effective in Postmenopausal Fibroids

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• Explain to interested patients that this small study suggests that uterine fibroid embolization (also known as uterine artery embolization) can be considered for menopausal women with bulk symptoms of fibroids.
  
  
• This study was published as an abstract and presented orally at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary as they have not yet been reviewed and published in a peer-reviewed publication.

Review

Sanjoy Kundu, M.D.
Scarborough Hospital in Toronto

TORONTO, April 3 - Uterine fibroid embolization, a minimally invasive treatment widely used for pre-menopausal women, can be equally useful after menopause, investigators reported here today.

"It has been a mainstay of therapy that menopause causes fibroids to regress," reported Robert Vogelzang, M.D., of Northwestern in Chicago at the Society of Interventional Radiology. But some women continue to have so-called bulk symptoms of fibroids -- urinary incontinence or urgency, pressure on adjacent structures, and constipation -- even after menopause.

"Uterine fibroid embolization can and should be applied to post-menopausal women who are complaining of fibroid symptoms," Dr. Vogelzang told reporters after he and colleagues reported on a small study of 24 consecutive women treated at Northwestern between 2001 and 2004.

All of the women met the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists criteria for menopause, the researchers said. Their average age was 52, and they were followed prospectively at intervals of one, six, 12, and 24 months to assess clinical response to therapy. Women whose symptoms included bleeding were excluded.

Patients had pre-procedure magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to confirm‎ the disease and rule out malignancies and post-procedure imaging to help eval‎uate the clinical response.    yhyu