Gerard Goh (Melbourne, Australia) talks to BLearning IR at CIRSE 2019 (Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe; 7–11 September; Barcelona, Spain) about Australian public Medicare data which has shown a “huge disparity” between the number of hysterectomies performed each year compared with the number of uterine artery embolisations procedures performed.
The data showed that of the 22,500 hysterectomies each year, of which you would expect to see four to five thousand performed for fibroids, fewer than 150 uterine artery embolisations were actually performed.
Goh says that it is “interesting” that a procedure which has been proven to be efficacious has such a poor take-up globally. A major reason for this, Goh states, comes down to a lack of “patient awareness and referrer awareness”. To tackle this issue, he believes interventional radiologists from across the world need to “come together” and work with societies to help educate women and referrers because currently “a lot of women are really missing out on uterus-sparing surgery for fibroids”.
