A 27-year-old, mother to a 2 months old baby, started having massive vaginal bleeding right after her C-section delivery. Constant bleeding resulted in a significant fall in her haemoglobin levels. She consulted her physician who advised hysterectomy, a surgical procedure for uterus removal. On one hand, lady was going through the trauma of constant bleeding and on the other hand she had an infant who was just sixty days old, completely dependent on her. Hospitalization for a major surgery within two months of C – Section and that too for uterus removal at this young age seemed too much to her. She then consulted Dr Avik Bhattacharya, Intervention and Endo Vascular Radiologist at CMRI.
After examining the patient, Dr Avik Bhattacharya realised that it was a clean C-section with no evidence of placenta or any other substance left behind in the uterus. Fresh Ultrasonography report revealed that there existed a tumour like structure inside the uterine cavity. This was the culprit resulting in constant bleeding and deterioration of her health. This is a very unusual and rare clinical development. Generally, at the time of delivery, the entire placenta adherent to the uterus comes out but, in some cases, due to its developmental malformation, it goes inside the uterine muscle and gets incorporated into the uterus wall and can only be surgically removed. It was the vascular structure of the placenta that was adherent to the uterus and was causing severe bleeding.
Dr Bhattacharya explained the patient about Uterine Artery Embolization (UAE), a minimally invasive procedure to stop vaginal bleeding. UAE is minimally invasive and works by blocking the blood supply to the uterus. After taking the consent of the patient, the procedure was performed at the State-of-the-Art Cath Lab at CMRI Hospital. The procedure took around 45 minutes and the bleeding stopped immediately. Excellent infrastructure with high-end digital imaging helped in the accuracy and precision.
The patient was kept under observation for next few hours and discharged in the evening the same day. Sharing her experience the lady said, “I was awestruck with the advancement in medical science. Without going through the traumatic surgical procedure of hysterectomy, I was home back to my daughter, the same day after getting rid of my tumour. I cannot believe that my heavy bleeding which continued for more than two months came to a halt in no time. I am grateful to the skilled doctor and his team who gave me an option of not going under the knife and getting treated without any hospitalisation.
Endovascular and Interventional Radiology is gearing up to revolutionise the field of surgery. Problems like uterine fibroid, varicose vein, peripheral arterial disease and other such diseases can easily be taken care of without any surgery
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