Scared that she may have to re­move her womb due to fi­broids, a sin­gle moth­er has been search­ing for the past six months for a less risky pro­ce­dure.

With the pain in her low­er back be­com­ing un­bear­able, cou­pled with heavy men­stru­al pe­ri­ods, Shirley (not her re­al) name was lean­ing to­wards do­ing the surgery which in­volves her tum­my and womb be­ing cut open and the fi­broids re­moved.

Then, on Thurs­day night Shirley felt her prayers were an­swered when she saw an ar­ti­cle in this news­pa­per about a hys­tero­scop­ic pro­ce­dure done for the first time in T&T where fi­broids and polyps were re­moved from pa­tients at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (SFGH) with no ab­dom­i­nal in­ci­sion, no pain and no post-trau­ma or ef­fects.

“I was read­ing the ar­ti­cle last night on­line and it found it to be so in­ter­est­ing. I re­al­ly don’t want to do the surgery be­cause there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that I may have to do a hys­terec­to­my and I don’t want to do that. And then the re­cu­per­at­ing time might be about six weeks and I am a sin­gle par­ent I re­al­ly don’t have any­one to help me. If I get a pro­ce­dure that is non-sur­gi­cal that will be per­fect for me.”

An­oth­er woman said about ten years ago she paid about $30,000 to re­move fi­broids, but a few small ones were left in­side her.

“Now, they have got­ten big and I may have to take out my womb and I don’t want to do that. I was re­search­ing oth­er pro­ce­dures avail­able in Amer­i­ca and Cana­da when I saw the ar­ti­cle in the Guardian I was so hap­py.”

The large tis­sue mass­es have caused her tum­my to push out and it ap­pears as though she is preg­nant.

These two women were among sev­er­al oth­ers who con­tact­ed the Guardian about hav­ing the pro­ce­dure done.

With no cost to tax­pay­ers, Bry­den Pi Ltd and the Medtron­ic team flew in Puer­to Ri­can Dr Juan Sal­ga­do, a gy­nae­col­o­gist who teach­es doc­tors across the world how to use the ma­chine, his team and the equip­ment in­to the coun­try to demon­strate to lo­cal doc­tors how the pro­ce­dure is done and teach them the tech­nique.

The pro­ce­dure was per­formed on three pa­tients at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Thurs­day and on six pa­tients at the Mt Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal on Fri­day. Sal­ga­do and his team left on a flight back to their coun­try, but the equip­ment will re­main here for two weeks.

Asked whether the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to in­vest in med­ical equip­ment, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh said, “First of all we are ex­per­i­ment­ing with the equip­ment as your ar­ti­cle clear­ly stat­ed. Once we are sat­is­fied with it then we will pur­chase it for the pub­lic sec­tor.”

Guardian Me­dia was told that the equip­ment costs about $200,000.

Gy­nae­co­log­ic on­col­o­gist Dr Vishal Ba­hall, a con­sul­tant with the South West and North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties, ad­vised women in­ter­est­ed in the hys­tero­scop­ic pro­ce­dure to vis­it their gy­nae­col­o­gist for an as­sess­ment to be done to de­ter­mine whether the pro­ce­dure is ap­pro­pri­ate for them. “The equip­ment is here right now and they may be able to get it done,” said Ba­hall. Gen­er­al­ly, about 15 surg­eries are done per month to re­move fi­broids, he said.