Procedures performed
Go home same-day
Symptom relief rate
Interventional radiologists
If your mother or sister has had fibroids, your own risk is significantly higher.
Estrogen and progesterone fuel fibroid growth, which is why pregnancy, birth control, and the years leading up to menopause can all influence how fibroids behave.
Fibroids are most common during the 30s and 40s and typically shrink after menopause.
African-American women develop fibroids more often, at younger ages, and with larger or more numerous growths — and are more likely to have severe symptoms.
Higher body weight is linked to an increased risk of developing fibroids.
Low vitamin D levels have been linked to a greater chance of fibroid formation.
Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals may contribute to fibroid risk.
The most common type. They grow within the muscular wall of the uterus and can cause pelvic pain, heavy periods, and menstrual irregularities.
Grow on the outside surface of the uterus and may press on nearby organs such as the bladder or bowel.
Grow beneath the uterine lining, often leading to heavy bleeding and fertility issues.
Attached to the uterus by a thin stalk, inside or outside the uterine cavity. If the stalk twists, it can trigger sudden, sharp pelvic pain.
Fibroids that have hardened over time as calcium deposits build up, usually after a fibroid outgrows its blood supply. They can be harder to treat with medication alone.
You don't need to know your fibroid type to get help — that's what imaging is for. If you're dealing with heavy bleeding, painful periods, constant fatigue, or pelvic pressure, it's time to talk to a fibroid specialist.
No hospital stay. Most patients go home within hours.
One pinhole in the wrist or groin. No abdominal cut, no stitches.
Whether you have one fibroid or twenty, UFE treats them all at once.
No hysterectomy. Your uterus — and the possibility of future pregnancy — stays intact.
| Factor | UFE WHAT WE DO | Hysterectomy | Myomectomy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uterus preserved | Yes | No — removed | Yes |
| Anesthesia | Moderate sedation | General | General |
| Hospital stay | None — outpatient | 1-3 days | 1-2 days |
| Recovery time | 1-2 weeks | 6-8 weeks | 4-6 weeks |
| Incision | Pinhole | Abdominal | Abdominal / laparoscopic |
| Treats all fibroids | Yes, at once | Yes | May miss smaller |
| Symptom relief | ~90% | ~95-100% (uterus removed) | ~80-90% |
| Hormonal effects | None | May trigger menopause | None |
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Uterine fibroids are non-cancerous growths that develop from the smooth muscle tissue of the uterus. Their exact cause isn't fully understood, but hormones like estrogen and progesterone fuel their growth. Some women never notice them, while others deal with heavy periods, pelvic pain or pressure, or bulk-related problems like needing to urinate frequently.
Fibroids are the most common pelvic tumor in women, and they disproportionately affect Black women. By age 35, roughly 40% of Caucasian women and 60% of African-American women have developed fibroids. Those numbers climb to 70% and more than 80%, respectively, by age 50 — and African-American women are also more likely to develop symptoms that interfere with daily life.
Fibroid symptoms fall into three categories: heavy menstrual bleeding, pelvic pain, and bulk symptoms caused by fibroid size or position.
Heavy bleeding is the most frequent complaint. It can deplete iron stores, causing anemia and exhaustion severe enough to keep women home from work — and in extreme cases, require a blood transfusion. Pelvic pain affects almost two out of three women with symptomatic fibroids and is the primary symptom for more than 10% of patients. Bulk symptoms develop when growing fibroids press on surrounding organs: bloating, a feeling of heaviness, pain with intercourse, frequent urination from bladder pressure, low back pain, constipation, and leg pain, swelling, or heaviness.
Diagnosis usually starts with your clinical history and is confirmed by pelvic ultrasound. Because many fibroids cause no symptoms, they're also found incidentally during routine pelvic exams.
If you're experiencing heavy periods, pelvic pressure, or urinary frequency, ultrasound is typically the first imaging step. Once fibroids are confirmed, the conversation turns to treatment. For patients considering uterine fibroid embolization (UFE) at our Atlanta-area offices, we order a pelvic MRI, which gives a far more detailed picture of the fibroids, the uterus, and nearby structures — and helps us plan the procedure precisely.
No, it is not necessary to treat all uterine fibroids. Because fibroids are benign, women without symptoms generally don't need intervention at all.
Treatment is reserved for women dealing with heavy bleeding, pelvic pain, or bulk symptoms such as urinary frequency. Asymptomatic fibroids can simply be watched. The one caveat: a newly discovered fibroid should be re-checked over time, since rapid growth can occasionally signal something other than a benign fibroid.
Options range from simple monitoring to medication to procedures — and the best fit depends on your symptoms, your plans for pregnancy, and whether keeping your uterus matters to you. The main paths are:
UFE has become a leading choice for women who want lasting symptom relief without surgery and without losing the uterus.
UFE is a minimally invasive, non-surgical outpatient procedure that shrinks fibroids by blocking the arteries that feed them. A thin, flexible catheter — under 2 mm across — enters through a small puncture in the wrist or groin and is steered into the pelvic arteries under X-ray guidance. Angiograms map the vessels supplying the uterus, and then microscopic particles are released into the uterine arteries, where they drift downstream and cut off blood flow to every fibroid. Deprived of blood, the fibroids shrink and symptoms fade.
There's no hospital stay. Most patients head home within hours, recover comfortably at home, and are back at work within about a week — with no significant visible scar and consistently high satisfaction.
Once their blood supply is blocked, fibroids shrink and stop causing symptoms — heavy bleeding and pain typically resolve quickly.
Over the following months, treated fibroids shrink to roughly one-third of their original size, relieving pressure on the bladder and other nearby organs as they do. The embolic particles themselves are completely inert: they don't trigger reactions and don't travel elsewhere in the body. Long-term results and patient satisfaction with UFE are excellent.
The core difference: UFE keeps your uterus; hysterectomy removes it. Both relieve fibroid symptoms effectively, but they're worlds apart in invasiveness, downtime, and scarring.
Hysterectomy is major surgery with a 4–6 week recovery and a surgical scar — horizontal and swimsuit-concealable when the uterus is small, but a more visible vertical midline incision when it's moderately sized or larger. Women prone to keloids can develop raised, sometimes painful scars.
UFE is an outpatient, non-surgical procedure. Most patients are back to work and normal activity in about a week. At Georgia Endovascular, we perform UFE through the radial artery in the wrist whenever appropriate, which speeds recovery and leaves no noticeable scar.
Yes, women with multiple fibroids are usually excellent candidates for UFE, because the procedure treats all fibroids at once. During UFE, tiny particles are injected into the uterine arteries and flow downstream to shut off the blood supply to every fibroid simultaneously.
Once their blood supply is cut off, the fibroids shrink and symptoms resolve — all treated equally during a single outpatient, non-surgical procedure.
Yes. The embolic particles reach and treat all fibroids at once, and the fibroids then shrink to about a third of their original size. With a very large uterus, that reduction typically takes around 3 months — sometimes up to 6, depending on starting size.
One honest caveat: if your top priority is a flat abdomen as fast as possible, hysterectomy gets there more directly — though for a large uterus, that usually means a vertical midline incision. In our experience, most patients say a flat belly isn't their main goal, and nearly all are pleased with how much bulk UFE eliminates. It just takes some patience.
Adenomyosis occurs when endometrial tissue — the uterine lining — grows into the muscle wall of the uterus, causing painful cramps, heavy bleeding, bloating, and pelvic pressure. It often hides from ultrasound but shows up clearly on MRI, which is one more reason we obtain a pelvic MRI before treatment.
And yes — embolization treats adenomyosis effectively. An IUD helps many patients, and hysterectomy has been the traditional fallback when medical management fails. For women who want to avoid major surgery, uterine artery embolization delivers strong results: recent studies report symptom improvement in over 90% of patients short-term, and one long-term study found 82% of embolization patients avoided hysterectomy across more than 7 years of follow-up.
Fibroids that are completely embolized during UFE generally don't return. The particles permanently cut off their blood supply, so they shrink and stay dormant.
Rarely, embolization is incomplete and a portion of fibroid tissue survives. Since your body's hormones can feed that residual tissue, it may regrow and cause symptoms again, occasionally needing further treatment. And as long as you're producing hormones, entirely new fibroids remain possible — though after menopause, falling hormone levels make further fibroid growth much less likely.
Most women return to work and normal activities about one week after UFE. Because it is an outpatient procedure, there is no hospital stay — you go home the same day and recover at home.
You'll be with us for about 6 hours on your procedure day, and we send you home with medication to manage any discomfort afterward. Our team follows up frequently to ensure a smooth recovery.
Yes, many women have had successful pregnancies after UFE. Studies show that fertility and miscarriage rates in UFE patients are no different from those of women of the same age who have fibroids and have had no treatment.
Women focused on preserving fertility should also weigh myomectomy, a surgery that removes one or two fibroids and has been shown to improve fertility. Some studies suggest certain pregnancy complications — pre-term labor and pregnancy-induced hypertension (pre-eclampsia) — may be slightly more frequent after UFE than after myomectomy. For good surgical candidates open to an operation, myomectomy may be the better fit; UFE remains a solid option for women who aren't surgical candidates or simply prefer to avoid surgery.
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