The Surgeon

The treatment of uterine fibroids with 3T MR-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) is safe, non-invasive and effective, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, NY.
“Approximately 25% of women in the United States have clinically symptomatic fibroids, and treatment has most commonly been surgical with hysterectomy or myomectomy. However, in the past decade, new options have been developed in radiology, includingnon-invasive MR-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) and minimally invasive uterine artery embolization (UAE) to treat these patients,” said Elizabeth K. Arleo, MD, lead author of the study along with Robert J. Min, MD, MBA, chairman of radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College.
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Heart surgeons at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report that by adding a simple 10-20 second step to an operative procedure they achieved a significant improvement in the outcome for the surgical treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF).
Reporting in the April issue of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, the surgeons describe an enhancement to the Cox-Maze procedure, a surgical procedure that redirects wayward electrical impulses causing AF by creating precisely placed scars, or ablations, in the heart muscle. The Cox-Maze procedure is highly effective, offering the best long-term cure rate for persistent atrial fibrillation.
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Use of multipolar radiofrequency ablation in the treatment of colorectal liver metastases is effective and has a relatively low recurrence rate, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at Charité, Campus Benjamin Franklin in Berlin, Germany.
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If you’re constantly reaching for antacids to control your heartburn, you may have a more serious problem called reflux disease. Some 25 million Americans have it* and now they have a new option to treat it. Using a newly-approved device for the first time in the U.S., doctors have performed surgery to fix reflux problems without making a single incision.
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There is a nonsurgical procedure performed by an interventional radiologist that takes less than an hour and involves only a small nick in the skin.Interventional radiologists use ultrasound imaging to thread a laser into the vein to seal it, redirecting blood flow to healthy veins. This is a nonsurgical alternative that is performed in the doctor’s office using only a local anesthetic and patients resume normal activities almost immediately.

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