What Is the Uterine Fibroid Embolization Procedure Like?

It's a procedure that's done completely without any surgery, the approach is like a heart catheterization. So we enter the body to get into each uterine artery. You can virtualize the uterine artery on each side of the body as branches of a tree, and the tree branches in getting smaller and smaller branches to get out to the leaves.

The fibroids are the leaves, and I can get into each of the uterine arteries separately with a little tiny catheter and flow direct tiny particles that will go out to the fibroids and cut the blood supply off to all the fibroids in the uterus. Without a blood supply the fibroids will soften and shrink, and as they do a woman's symptoms disappear.

So you can treat an entire uterus, it takes about 45 minutes. The patient will then recover in the hospital for a brief amount of time and go home on that same day with just a Band-Aid at the top of her right leg where we went in. So it's non-surgical, it's safer, less invasive, shorter recovery, and importantly a woman gets to keep her uterus.