A Gynaecologist, Dr Bukunmi Kolade, says women who have fibroid should take advantage of advanced medical science in their choice of treatment of the condition to reduce complications.

Kolade said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan while speaking on the increasing prevalence of fibroid among women.

“Fibroids removal can be done in several ways.

“So, traditionally we have what we call an open surgery in which a person goes to the hospital has an open surgery, spends another five to six days in the hospital and goes back home and spends another two to three weeks at home before she can get back to work about four weeks later.

“But now there are other things that can be done; so we are talking about minimally invasive surgery. These are surgeries that are done with small incision size, incisions are like puncture size.

“It reduces the hospital stay, it reduces how long patients take to recuperate and it increases how soon the person can get back to work.

“Unfortunately the equipment for this kind of surgery is not widely available in Nigeria and developing countries generally, so that is a big one and then the skills for performing them are not widely available.

“So we have pockets of people that do their own thing, but we need more people to get involved in what we call minimal invasive surgery or we also call it keyhole surgery.”

Kolade said that although various fibroid treatments were available, the diiferent ages and symptoms being experienced by individuals determined the the kind of treatment that should be administered.

He said there was evidence that about 70 to 80 per cent of black women would have fibroid at some point in their life hence the need to create awareness on the disease.

Fibroids are abnormal growths that develop in or on a woman’s uterus.

Sometimes the tumours become quite large and cause severe abdominal pain and heavy periods, but in other cases, they cause no signs or symptoms at all.

The growths are typically benign, or noncancerous. The cause of fibroids is unknown.

Fibroids are also known by the following names – leiomyomas, myomas, uterine myomas, and fibromas

According to the National Institutes of Health about up to 80 percent of women have them by the age of 50. However, most women do not have any symptoms and may never know they have fibroids.

The type of fibroid a woman develops depends on its location in or on the uterus. (NAN)