Amy Reed, Doctor Who Fought a Risky Medical Procedure, Dies at 44

[question everything]

Dr. Amy J. Reed, a physician and cancer patient who turned a personal calamity into a crusade to spare other women from the medical procedure that harmed her, died Wednesday night at her home in Yardley, Pa. She was 44.

Her husband, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, said the cause was leiomyosarcoma of the uterus, a type of cancer.

Dr. Reed and her husband fought for years to ban the use of a surgical tool called a power morcellator, which has a spinning blade that slices up tissue so it can be extracted through small incisions. Though the device is regarded as a great boon to minimally invasive surgery, if a patient has cancer, as Dr. Reed did, morcellation can spread the disease.

Dr. Reed and Dr. Noorchashm (pronounced NOOR-chash) won some notable victories. Because of their efforts, the Food and Drug Administration studied morcellation and in 2014 recommended that it not be used in the “the vast majority” of women having surgery for uterine fibroids, a common tumor that is usually benign but that can hide a dangerous type of cancer.

Some insurers began declining coverage for morcellation, and one major manufacturer took its morcellators off the market. Use of the technique dropped.

Dr. Reed, an anesthesiologist and the mother of six children, underwent surgery involving morcellation in 2013, when, at 40, she had her uterus removed because of fibroids. The operation was performed at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School, where both Dr. Reed and Dr. Noorchashm had teaching positions. A biopsy after the operation found that Dr. Reed had a hidden leiomyosarcoma, an aggressive type of cancer.

More..

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/us/amy-reed-died-cancer-patient-who-fought-morcellation-procedure.html

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It happened in the end of May, just found it.

[tonyt53]

1. The sad part is, they knew several years ago that cancer cells can travel anywhere in the body.

Why the hell would any doctor even consider using such an instrument when that type of tumor can , and does, hide cancer? Hell, I had a tumor in a kidney removed by a lapo method last year. They went through my side because is was on the rear of my kidney. The procedure amounted to the doctor putting the gold ball-sized tumor inside of a bag while it was still inside of my kidney. That prevented it from touching any other parts of my kidney or other organs on the way out. What happened to her was sad on so many levels.