- DR. ABAYOMI AJAYI
MD/CEO of Nordica Fertility Centre, Dr. Abayomi has re-emphasized the need for reproductive health specialists in Nigeria to start considering High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Machine (HIFU), a non-surgical option as the safest means of treating fibroids.
The fertility specialist said this in a press interview which he granted a few weeks ago where he spoke extensively on Fibroid and how best to tackle it.
He affirmed that fibroids are the major reasons why women have surgery in their pelvis. He revealed that about 50% to 70% of women will have fibroids before they are 50 years old. This calls for serious concern as quite a number of these women within the aforementioned age group still want to have children.
He described how Fibroids most of the time affect the quality of life causing a lot of women not to be able to function at their best. He said apart from the fact that some of them have infertility, they cannot be helped because they are bleeding irregularly. As a result, they might not be able to consummate their marriage. These he said to a large extent affect their self-esteem as they are exposed to being stigmatized in the society.
Dr. Abayomi went on to discuss the many options available in the treatment of fibroids. These he categorized as the surgery and the non -surgical. He also took time to dwell on some of the drugs that can be used.
He even said not all fibroids require surgery as what can be done is what he called watchful-waiting where drugs that can impede the growth of the fibroids are administered to patients.
Having done a detailed analysis of the pros and cons as well as the risk factors of the various methods of treating fibroids, he opined that there is a need to focus more on the non-surgical methods of treating fibroid. He also called for a proper cross examination of patients before choosing the best form of treatments to be administered.
Meanwhile, he singled out the use of the HIFU machine as the safest and best method of treating fibroid. He said “ HIFU does not affect your overall reserve in any way, and that’s why we are talking more about HIFU.”
He revealed that the HIFU machine has been instrumental to the successful treatment of fibroids patients at Nordica Fibroid Centre in Lagos having recorded over 400 fibroids cases being treated.
He went further to explain how the HIFU machine operates. He said “HIFU is an ultrasound that is converted to heat energy. And just like you boil an egg and you denature the protein. You cannot fry the egg that you have boiled, because you have denatured the protein. The same way is what happens to the fibroid that HIFU treats. The protein is denatured, and therefore, it dies. But now the body will have to absorb it over time. So what we say is in three months, we expect the decrease in volume of the fibroids to be about 30, 40%. In about six months, we expect it to be about 50%. And in about one year, we expect it to be about 70%. But for some, it depends on the size that you’re starting from. For some, it completely disappears.
“The advantage of high food is that you don’t need anaesthesia. It’s a day case. You don’t bleed at all. It takes away all the complications that you can get from myomectomy surgery. The only thing that people need to understand is that we don’t remove fibroids with HIFU, we burn them.
