Eleven doctors practice image-assisted precision medicine, on five pathologies and without any remaining charges.
At the cost of several hundred thousand euros of investment, a new interventional radiology department welcomed its first patient on Thursday, April 6. Bringing together eleven self-employed radiologists within the independent Imadiag group housed within the Bonnefon clinic, this new equipment allows very minimally invasive arterial or venous intervention in order to carry out an embolization.
Hospitalization, of short duration under local anesthesia, has few constraining postoperative effects unlike conventional surgery and an efficiency rate of around 70 to 80% depending on the pathologies. Technically, three reading devices, an angiograph, an echograph and a CBCT providing a three-dimensional image, make it possible to guide the gestures of the doctors. Three women and eight men treating five pathologies detailed by doctors Alexandre Sadat, Asmaa Belaouni and Philippe Akessoul.
1. Pelvic pain
“The pelvic congestion syndrome (PCS) is characterized by chronic pain representing 30% of pelvic pain and which is sometimes the subject of a diagnostic wandering of 8 years following a bad reading”, underlines doctor Alexandre Sadat.
Although endometriosis is the subject of specific communication, the SCP is under-evaluated despite a frequency of about four interventions per week at the Bonnefon clinic. In fact, venous insufficiency generates a dull pain resulting in the cessation of sexual intercourse causing depressive states in some women. The operation then consists of embolization of the ovarian veins.
2 Enlarged prostate
In men of a certain age, this increase in the size of the prostate leads, among other things, to an increase in the frequency of urination, sometimes taking on an urgency character. The operation under local anesthesia consists of “an embolization of the prostatic artery by injecting microbeads”, continues Doctor Alexandre Sadat. “No complications were found unlike surgery which can lead to adverse effects of retrograde ejaculation or incontinence.”
3 Treatment of rectal bleeding
The operation under local anesthesia, painless, consists in the treatment, always by embolization, of the hemorrhoids causing bleeding by the anus.
4 Uterine fibroids
A benign non-cancerous tumor located inside or on the muscular wall of the uterus, embolization “allows to avoid hysterectomy, i.e. the removal of the uterus”, specifies doctor Asmaa Belaouni. A surgical act not without consequence because it prohibits any future pregnancy.
Thanks to interventional radiology, microbeads are injected into the vessels irrigating the fibroid. The latter is then no longer vascularized and, once dried up, the symptoms are then treated. It is possible to observe an expulsion by natural way.
5 Varicocele
“It is the equivalent of pelvic varicose veins in humans, i.e. a dilation of the left testicular vein”, explains Doctor Philippe Akessoul. Benign affection, it can however influence the male fertility by the fact of a rise in the temperature within the purses. The operation consists, once again, of embolization of the affected vein using biological glue or microsprings.