FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 4, 2000
For photos or more information, contact: Leslie Myers at (601) 984-1104, [email protected]
UMC's interventional MRI takes world focus on fibroids
JACKSON, Miss. -- The interventional MRI again has been the tool for a world's first procedure at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, this time to destroy fibroid tumors of the uterus.
The new procedure, called I-MRI fibroid cryosurgery, was performed by UMC's Dr. Patrick Sewell, an assistant professor of radiology and surgery, with Dr. Bryan D. Cowan, a professor of obstetrics-gynecology.
The interventional radiological procedure was developed by Sewell and uses the I-MRI to guide a CryoHit (freezing) probe through a small incision and into the tumor. The probe, which is a surgical tube with a freezing tip, destroys the tumor's cells by reaching temperatures as low as minus 367 F.
The procedure first was performed March 24 at UMC on a 48-year-old woman from Jackson who had a grapefruit-size tumor. Her tumor -- like almost all fibroid tumors -- was benign, Sewell noted.
But it was causing the leading symptom of fibroid tumors: heavy bleeding, Cowan said. "This procedure is needed to provide a minimally invasive treatment for patients with symptomatic uterine fibroids.
"The patient is doing great," Cowan added. "She went home the next morning after surgery and has not reported any symptoms since." A week after surgery, the patient said she'd had no pain and no need to take even ibuprofen or acetaminophen.
Heavy bleeding can lead to chronic anemia and, in extreme cases, can be life threatening. Fibroids, which can grow as large as a basketball, also may cause pelvic pain, adverse pressure on surrounding organs and infertility, Sewell noted.
"We hope this proves to be a useful way to treat certain patients with fibroids. 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.
"It's also another demonstration of the I-MRI's potential."
UMC is one of three original test sites in the United States for the vertical twin-magnet, I-MRI, which is manufactured by General Electric. The I-MRI provides nearly "real time" video images of internal tissue during surgery. The other original I-MRI sites are Harvard and Stanford Universities' teaching hospitals.
One or more CryoHit probes, designed by Galil Medical Ltd. of Tel Aviv, Israel, are used in this particular procedure, Sewell said.
The physicians said that follow-up ultrasound and MRI tests 12 weeks after surgery will show whether all of tumor cells appear killed.
Of patients with fibroids, about one-third need treatment.
Currently, the standard treatments for fibroid tumors are hysterectomy (surgical removal of the uterus) or myomectomy (surgical removal of the fibroid), Cowan said. The post-surgery recovery period for those treatments is three to six weeks, he added.
Another developmental procedure increasingly applied is a uterine artery embolization (UAE), the physicians said.
All three of those current treatments require removing, damaging or destroying more healthy tissue than this procedure, Sewell noted. A hysterectomy, of course, results in infertility. About half of myomectomy patients who want children later conceive, Cowan estimated. The UAE, which has been used for several years, destroys fibroids by blocking blood supply; its effect on fertility and the ovaries is largely unknown, the physicians said.
Thus, Sewell and Cowan, with interventional radiologist Dr. W.M.W. "Wady" Gedroyc of St. Mary's Hospital in London, plan to collect data on two new percutaneous procedures -- Sewell's I-MRI fibroid cryosurgery and I-MRI fibroid laser surgeries being performed with the London hospital's I-MRI. In a separate study, four UMC physicians also plan to collect data on the UAE procedure.
Spokesmen at GE and Galil as well as a computer search of published medical papers confirmed today that Sewell's I-MRI fibroid cryosurgery is a world's first procedure.
At UMC, Sewell developed two other world's first percutaneous procedures -- for kidney cancer and lung cancer. To destroy kidney cancer, his renal cryosurgery similarly uses the I-MRI and the CryoHit probe. For lung cancer, his radiofrequency of the lung tumor ablation uses a Radio Therapeutics Corp. radiofrequency (hot) probe guided by an interventional CAT scan. He recently performed the latter procedure in China for a controlled study.
***
RSS