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U.S. WOMEN FROM 21 STATES RESPOND TO NEW I-MRI FIBROID PROCEDURE
JACKSON, Miss. -- A world's first procedure to destroy fibroid tumors of the uterus is bringing patients from across America to the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
I-MRI fibroid cryosurgery is being performed by UMC's Dr. Patrick Sewell, an assistant professor of radiology and surgery, with Dr. Bryan D. Cowan, a professor of obstetrics-gynecology.
Some 75 patients from 21 U.S. states and from as far away as the United Arab Emirates have contacted UMC to have the procedure performed.
The interventional radiological procedure developed by Sewell uses nearly real-time video images from the interventional MRI to guide a CryoHit (freezing) probe through a small incision and into the fibroid. The probe, which is a surgical tube with a freezing tip, reaches temperatures as low as minus 367 F and shrinks the tumor by destroying cells.
Both the I-MRI and CryoHit are approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
The procedure first was performed March 24 at UMC on a 48-year-old Jackson woman. Her tumor -- like almost all fibroid tumors -- was benign, Sewell noted. But it was causing the leading symptom of fibroid tumors: heavy bleeding. In that patient, the growth also was causing stress incontinence.
She went home the morning after surgery and reported no adverse symptoms. In the week after surgery, she'd had no pain and no need to take even ibuprofen or acetaminophen, Cowan said.
Sewell said all three women who have undergone the investigative procedure have had the same encouraging results. Their fibroid tumors rapidly shrunk by about 60 percent in the initial eight weeks and will "continue to shrink" for several months, he explained. The largest tumor, to date, was the size of a cantaloupe. The first patient's stress incontinence stopped within 10 days. Abnormal bleeding stopped within the month.
"It's another way to treat a disease with a cheaper, safer, less painful and faster procedure," Sewell said. "We think this less-invasive procedure also could prove to help women retain their fertility and, of course, their uterus." But this initial study by Sewell and Cowan involves women who are not concerned with fertility.
Of women in the general population with fibroids, about one-third need treatment.
UMC is one of three original U.S. test sites for the vertical, twin-magnet I-MRI; the others are at Harvard and Stanford Universities' teaching hospitals. Sewell also is recognized worldwide for developing I-MRI renal cryosurgery for kidney cancer and radiofrequency of the lung tumor ablation for lung cancer; they also were world's first procedures at UMC.
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