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Women beware! This fibroid removal process could just cost you your life!

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Fibroid removing device could spread cancer

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning women and physicians about a gynecologic device that has given women cancer.

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Highlights

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
11/25/2014 (9 years ago)

Published in Health

Keywords: Health, U.S., fibroid, power morcellator

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The FDA said that women who thought they had harmless fibroids found that their cancer was actually worse after they had used a device called a power morcellator.

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This device turned treatable conditions into a life-threatening disease.

"We believe that in the vast majority of women, the procedure should not be performed," said Dr. William Maisel, the deputy director for science and chief scientist of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

Power morcellators are used to pulverize fibroids before they are removed through a tiny hole in the abdomen.

However, danger exists if the cells are cancerous-something that is impossible to tell without a surgery-and if they are, the device will spread the cells throughout the abdomen, virtually guaranteeing that the cancer will grow and become extremely dangerous.

Hooman Noorchashm, a surgeon, among those leading the charge against the device. His wife, Amy Reed, had a routine hysterectomy in 2013 and ended up with stage 4 cancer.

At the time Reed was a doctor at Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston. She ended up going into reminder and is now ready to get back to work at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Noorchashm has repeatedly called for the FDA to institute an outright ban on morcellation. He does not believe that a warning is the right course of action, and as long as the device is available, women will be at risk-especially younger women who are worried about surgical scars.

Morcellators are manufactured by a subsidiary company of Johnson & Johnson, which pulled the product from the market in April. Many major hospitals have also stopped using the product, and use of the device has fallen dramatically since then.

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