By Sola Ogundipe
FOR generations, the word “fibroid” has carried a familiar fear for Nigerian women: heavy bleeding, severe pain, a swollen abdomen, infertility and, often, the prospect of surgery and a long recovery. For many women, it starts quietly.
Periods become heavier, the pain worsens and the abdomen gradually becomes distended. Eventually comes the hospital visit, the scan and, for some, the word they have dreaded all along: surgery.
Treatment has traditionally meant procedures such as myomectomy or hysterectomy, with the possibility of blood loss, hospital admission and a prolonged recovery. The fear is not only about the operation itself. Women worry about anaesthesia, the cost of treatment, time away from work and, perhaps most importantly, whether treatment could affect their chances of having children.
For women who have completed their families or have severe symptoms, removal of the uterus may sometimes be recommended. But the picture is changing. Instead of cutting into the abdomen to remove fibroids, doctors can use concentrated sound waves to heat and destroy targeted fibroid tissue without a conventional surgical incision. The technology is called High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound, or HIFU. Nigeria is now part of that story.
