The Benefits and Limits of Laparoscopic Surgery for Uterine Fibroids

Uterine leiomyomas (i.e., fibroids, myomas) are the most common gynecologic tumors in women of reproductive age (1). Clearly, the majority of such lesions are asymptomatic (2). Symptoms directly attributable to these benign tumors represent the most common reason for laparotomy in non-pregnant women in the United States (3,4), and also in Taiwan (5). Whereas in decades past, hysterectomy was seen almost as a panacea for uterine leiomyomas, more recently attention has been paid to the development of pharmaceutical agents and less-invasive procedures (6). Frequently, such procedures are designed to retain the uterus (6). Of these, myomectomy may be a choice among the uterine-sparing treatments for symptomatic uterine myoma (7,8). The surgical mode of access usually employed in myomectomy is traditional exploratory laparotomy or its modification-mini-laparotomy (MLT) (9) or ultra-mini laparotomy (UMLT) (10,11), though recently, laparoscopy (12-14) or a combination of laparoscopy and MLT (9), vaginal surgery (15), and hysteroscopic myomectomy (16-21) have represented valid alternatives. However, myomectomy alone provides varying degrees of symptom control and a high percentage of recurrence, not only for the tumors themselves, but also for the symptoms. For example, one study reported that symptom resolution varied from 84.0% to 100% depending on different items and 21 (19.4%) of 108 patients experienced a recurrence after an average interval of 16 months (range, 1.8-47.4 months) (22). Therefore, an alternative or additional therapy might be required to provide longer durable symptom control and minimize tumor recurrence. One of the strategies is laparoscopic uterine vessel occlusion (LUVO), also known as laparoscopic uterine artery occlusion (LUAO) (23,24). The rationale for using LUVO in the management of symptomatic myomas is found in the successful experience with uterine-artery embolization (UAE), which was introduced in 1995 as an alternative technique for treat