For generations, surgery has played a key role in treating symptomatic fibroids. We should be training the subsequent generation of clinicians. The symptoms come in the make of heavy bleeding and anaemia. The bleeding can be irregular depending on the location of these fibroids, and there might be a bump that is erroneous for pregnancy.
Over the years, the central treatment options for uterine fibroids have included invasive procedures such as myomectomy, which removes the fibroids, and hysterectomy, which involves removing the uterus.
HIFU, still, offers a varied path. We should be developing centres of excellence competent of serving the wider region. There is no surgical removal of the fibroid. Instead, focused ultrasound energy precisely ablates the targeted tissue, which is gradually broken down by the body as the fibroid shrinks over time. “Compared using benchmark surgery, this can mean smaller disruption and a faster acquire to usual activities. The ability to process selected fibroids free from an incision changes that feel.
For appropriately selected women, the maternal health authority said HIFU offers a completely non-invasive, uterus-preserving treatment selection.
He extra noted, “’ There is no surgical incision and no genuine-world removal of the fibroid. HIFU represents one such innovation.
“Instead of making an incision, HIFU concentrates ultrasound energy at a precisely identified aim in the body. They can disrupt labor, relationships, sexual wellbeing, emotional health and everyday standard of life. The uterus remains in place. The energy generates heat that ablates the targeted fibroid tissue whilst surrounding structures are reliable.
As technology continues to change healthcare delivery worldwide, High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound is emerging as a non-invasive treatment alternative for women using uterine fibroids in Nigeria.
For decades, a diagnosis of uterine fibroids in Nigeria has regularly been followed by an uncomfortable conversation around surgery.
But the introduction of HIFU treatment in Nigeria’s healthcare structure is changing that narrative, demonstrating what can be achieved when medical expertise, enhanced technology, and investment converge.
So far, around 1,000 Nigerian women have reportedly been treated alongside the technology free from surgical cuts, stitches, or the blood loss affiliated including usual surgery.
For several women alongside fibroids, notably those hoping to have children, the expectation of surgery can be frightening.
Concerns regarding losing the uterus, difficulty conceiving, blood transfusion, and longer hospital stays have discouraged a lot of women from seeking treatment.
Fibroids are tumour-like, non-cancerous growths in the uterus that can occasionally halt a woman from becoming pregnant owing to the detail that they can produce problems for the fertilised egg attaching to the lining of the uterus.
The characteristic of life of women including fibroids is disturbed by the symptoms they experience. That distinction matters enormously to women.”
What 1,000 treatments represent
He noted that when the initial ultrasound-guided HIFU platform was introduced at the Fibroid Care Centre at Nordica in 2021, the technology was still relatively novel to the African region.
“At the time, HIFU systems were introduce in solely a handful of African countries, including South Africa and Egypt. HIFU is a recent, non-invasive medical treatment used to administer uterine fibroids excluding the summon for for surgery.
It uses focused ultrasound waves to aim and destroy fibroid tissue intense during the body lacking affecting surrounding organs.
Unlike established surgical procedures such as myomectomy or hysterectomy, HIFU does not refer to for cuts, stitches, blood loss, or a lengthy-lasting hospital stay.
The Managing Supervisor of Nordica Fertility Centre and Fibroid Care Centre, Dr Abayomi Ajayi, said the completion of the 1,000th HIFU treatment at the fibroid treatment centre represents greater than just a numerical milestone.
Ajayi said HIFU is now used in extra than 37 countries and has successfully treated over 500,000 women including fibroids free from surgery.
“It is an essential marker of what becomes feasible when fresh medical technology is introduced, area expertise is deliberately developed, and women are given larger alternative in how their reproductive health conditions are managed”, he said.
Introduced in 2002 at the University of Oxford, HIFU is now demonstrate in five African countries, including Nigeria.
It was earliest introduced in South Africa, followed by Egypt, Nigeria, and later Kenya, together with thousands of women embracing the procedure.
From transparent surgery to treatment minus incision
According to the gynaecologist, uterine fibroids are benign tumours of the uterus and one of the most usual gynaecological conditions affecting women during their reproductive years.
“They can cause heavy menstrual bleeding, pain, pressure symptoms and, depending on their characteristics, may be linked alongside reproductive difficulties. Nordica’s program became the opening ultrasound-guided HIFU facility dedicated to fibroid treatment in Nigeria and West Africa.
“What was then a relatively unfamiliar technology has as become portion of a growing world movement towards non-invasive treatment. It remains an crucial and periodically important treatment, and myomectomy continues to have a explicitly key place in the regulation of fibroids.
“But surgery is not minus consequences. The treated tissue is subsequently broken down by the body, and the fibroid progressively shrinks.
“There is no abdominal incision. Not every fibroid is appropriate for HIFU, and not every woman needs the same treatment. It is regarding moving away from a one-size-fits-all technique and giving women connection to a broader variety of fitting choices.”
For him, the inquiry should increasingly become not easily, “How do we exclude this fibroid?” but “What treatment optimal addresses this woman’s symptoms, circumstances and later reproductive goals?”
The following thousand
Ajayi pointed out that celebrating 1,000 treatments is consequently not easily regarding looking backwards.
“It should provoke a larger conversation concerning what comes subsequent”, he added.
He said Nigeria needs increased investment in medical technology, stronger partnerships amid Nigerian healthcare institutions and universal centres of innovation, contend change of clinical knowledge, and locally generated inquiry that tells us how technologies perform in African populations.
“We should be collecting and publishing our outcomes. It will be how much expertise we develop roughly them, how much evidence we generate from them, and how a lot of lives are improved owing to the reality that they are here”, he said.
1000 women treated, customized milestone
He described 1,000 women treated as a milestone that is customized and moreover represents something larger for Nigeria.
“For Nigeria, it represents something larger: proof that we can adopt sophisticated medical technology, develop nearby expertise approximately it, and initiate changing the direction in which patients journey for care.
“And for the woman who has just been told she has fibroids or adenomyosis, possibly the most important mention is the simplest: You may have further options than you consider”, he said.
Any operation brings promising risks joined including anaesthesia, bleeding, infection, postoperative pain, adhesions and recovery”, he explained.
Giving insight into the benefits of HIFU treatment in fibroid manner in Nigeria, Ajayi said its adoption was important to increase women’s entry to standard care and safer treatment options amid the challenges confronting the health sector.
The Nordica boss noted, “In a healthcare environment where availability to reliable blood products, authority surgical expertise, operating theatre capacity and high-standard postoperative care can vary considerably, technologies that authorize appropriately selected patients to prevent an operation deserve individual attention. And we should increasingly assume that Nigerian women can connection world-class reproductive healthcare minus leaving the country.
“The most key determine of shift forward will not be how a lot of machines we import. That is why the forthcoming of fibroid care is not regarding replacing surgery using HIFU. At present, HIFU technology is obtainable in 37 countries worldwide and has been used in further than 350,000 cases of fibroids and adenomyosis,” he added,
Against this backdrop, Ajayi said completing 1,000 HIFU treatments in Nigeria represents much additional than an institutional milestone.
For the fertility authority, achieving this feat demonstrates that enhanced, non-invasive reproductive health technology can be successfully introduced, adapted and delivered at scale in our healthcare structure.
“Extra importantly, it represents 1,000 women who were able to inspect an supplementary treatment preference for conditions that can profoundly influence their everyday lives”, he said.
Challenges of women living together with fibroids
The accurate value of medical technology is not measured by how developed the machine is, but by what it changes for the patient.
For a woman living including debilitating heavy periods, chronic pelvic pain or pressure, fibroids can alter far further than the uterus.
Source: No surgery, no scars: How HIFU is changing fibroid care in Nigeria
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