October 5, 1999
ABC Good Morning America
Uterine Artery Embolization for Fertility Retention

Diane Sawyer

This is a condition that affects a lot of women--one in four American women--causing tremendous pain and forcing many of them to make a painful choice.

For years the only real cure for benign tumors of the uterus called fibroids was to remove the uterus itself. In fact that's the most common reason in the past behind the 600,000 hysterectomies performed each year in the U.S.

But in today's "healthy woman," medical correspondent Nancy Snyderman has a report on a brand new treatment that can make options more possible.

Nancy Snyderman

Leslie Miles

Nancy Snyderman

Leslie's fibroids, benign tumors that grow in or on a woman's uterus, gave her many of the classic symptoms.

Besides the bleeding problems, fibroids can cause pain in the abdomen or lower back and during sex. And their size can create pressure, causing even more problems. Like difficulty urinating, frequent urination, and constipation.

Until now, hysterectomy was the treatment of choice. It's 100% curative but the cost is a woman's fertility.

Since its introduction in 1996, over 6,000 women worldwide have opted for this new alternative to hysterectomy to treat their fibroids.

In a hospital x-ray room, a thin catheter is inserted into the groin.

Using x-ray guidance, a doctor threads it into two arteries that supply the uterus and the fibroids with blood. Then comes the surprising part. Doctors use the catheter to inject small plastic particles into the arteries causing the blood to clot. With no blood supply to feed it, the fibroid slowly starves and begins to shrink.

Leslie was one of the first women in the United States to have this procedure. And she saw an improvement in her symptoms almost immediately.

We don't know, really. We know it is under hormonal influence, especially during certain times of a woman's life after the age of 40 when estrogen and progesterone are changing.

These tumors can really grow to such significance that you can appear pregnant as the woman in the story said. She looked like she was five months pregnant. So, there is a hormonal base even if we don't understand precisely what triggers them.

I think it's really important to look at yourself and your child bearing years. For instance, those of us who perhaps have had all of the children we're going to have, a hysterectomy may sometimes be the real treatment of choice.

But this procedure is intended for women who want to spare the uterus.

And until now women who’d want to keep their uteruses but still had to get rid of the fibroids had to undergo other kinds of operations that still had a pretty high sterility rate.

The advantage of this is it allows you to forego major surgery, keep your uterus, have the procedure to get rid of the fibroids, and then still have a pretty good chance of preserving the lining of the uterus. And it's the lining of the uterus that is crucial to the implantation of sperm and egg if you want to go ahead and have a baby.