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What does one DO about
them?
Uterine fibroids often do not require treatment, but when they are
problematic, they may be treated surgically, non-surgically, with medication or with alternative
treatments. The very heavy menstrual bleeding, clotting and pelvic pain, that fibroids sometimes
cause lead many women to seek treatment.
What about
treatment?
There are several different types of treatments:
Hormonal: Uterine fibroid tumors require estrogen
and progesterone to grow, and without these hormones, fibroid tumors usually shrink in size.
Hormonal treatments (such as birth control pills) may help control excessive menstrual bleeding
caused by fibroids in some patients. Non-surgical: Uterine Fibroid Embolization, UFE - Known
medically as uterine artery embolization, approaches the treatment of fibroids by blocking the
arteries that supply blood to them causing them to shrink or disappear. Uterine fibroid
embolization is a more permanent solution than hormone therapy. When hormonal treatment is stopped
the fibroid tumors usually grow back.
Uterine fibroid embolization is not surgery, but it's done at a
hospital. This uterine fibroids treatment procedure usually takes between 1 and 3 hours, depending
on how long it takes to position the catheter and how easily the catheter can be positioned in the
arteries to the uterus.
Although uterine artery embolization has been in use for two
decades to treat bleeding after childbirth, it wasn’t until early 1997 that the technique was
introduced as a potential treatment for uterine fibroids.
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