Deciding the best treatment for uterine fibroids

Deciding the best treatment for uterine fibroids | Image Credit: jeffersonhealth.org.

Contemporary OB/GYN:

Please introduce yourself and outline your lecture on uterine fibroids for Symposia Medicus.

Jay Goldberg, MD:

Hi, I'm Jay Goldberg. I'm an ob-gyn at Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia, which is part of the Jefferson Health Network. I'm also the director of the Philadelphia Fibroids Center. The talk that I gave earlier today looked at different treatments for fibroids. We talked about patients desiring fertility and those not desiring fertility, talked about whether the patient's symptomatic or asymptomatic, and the symptoms they'd have, whether it's bleeding symptoms, bulk symptoms, or fertility symptoms, and how that can guide you in recommending appropriate treatments for the patients. We talked about options as far as expected management, which may be the appropriate thing for half the patients. We talked about medical treatments. We talked about progestin IUDs that may help patients not desiring fertility, who mainly have bleeding issues. We also talked about uterine fibroid embolization, which is a procedure, especially for somebody who does not want fertility, which can decrease volume of fibroids by about 40% by 3-dimensional volume and improve their bleeding. And we also talked about surgical treatments for fibroids.