Focus on the Facts – 04.18.16

The guest today was Dr Hooman Noorchashm, who is leading the campaign to ban power morcellation used in hysterectomies to remove fibroids in the uterus. His campaign began in December 2013, after his wife, Dr Amy Reed’s unsuspected uterine cancer was spread through her abdomen by morcellation during a routine hysterectomy in October 2013, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Morcellation takes a Stage 1 treatable cancer immediately to a Stage 4 terminal cancer and for many women, this routine procedure ends with a death sentence. For over 20 years, the morcellator has spread cancer and led to the death of thousands of women and yet it stayed on the market because the device makers, the doctors and the hospitals did not report the harm caused by the device to the FDA. In late 2013, Amy Reed was the first to report that morcellation was spreading cancer in women to the FDA.

 

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