26 March 2024
About three years after having a C-section, Eugénia Bonfiglioli started suffering debilitating pain in her lower abdomen that made it hard to walk and forced her to take anti-inflammatory steroids for 10 days every month during and right after her period. It was several years before she was diagnosed with parietal endometriosis.
“Endometrial tissue had formed on my scar, and that was what was causing my pain and making my life very difficult,” Eugénia says.
Endometriosis occurs when endometrial tissue grows outside the uterus, often on the fallopian tubes or ovaries, and so does not shed during a menstrual cycle the way healthy endometrial tissue does. When endometrial tissue grows on the walls of the abdomen after a C-section or other surgery, it’s called parietal or abdominal wall endometriosis.
Eugénia worried about the risk of surgery to remove her endometrial lesions. “I didn’t want to undergo another surgery and get another scar and the possibility of still having this issue my whole life,” Eugénia says. “I didn’t have much hope.”
Not much hope, that is, until by chance she mentioned her condition to Dr. Luigi Cazzato, a radiation oncologist at the Regional University Hospital Centre (CHRU) of Strasbourg who had started using cryoablation therapy to treat endometriosis.
How cryoablation works: a revolutionary treatment approach
Cryoablation involves using a hollow probe or catheter, guided by medical imaging, to deliver extremely cold liquid to freeze and destroy targeted tissue, while the surrounding tissue is left intact. Initially used mainly for cancer, cryoablation therapy is increasingly being used to target endometrial lesions.
For endometriosis, cryoablation is an outpatient procedure, performed under local anesthesia and lasting about an hour. Using MRI or CT guidance, the radiologist introduces one or more thin cryotherapy needles to circulate a non-toxic refrigerant liquified gas into the lesion to destroy its cells.
Dr. Cazzato, who treated Eugénia’s endometriosis with Boston Scientific cryoablation therapy, says that for patients with abdominal wall endometriosis, “cryoablation allows for an easy return to daily life, with rapid and almost painless postoperative recovery and improved quality of life.”
Cryoablation in France and beyond
CHRU Strasbourg is one of 40 centres in France now treating endometriosis using Boston Scientific cryoablation technology. Indeed, a recent study from a multidisciplinary team of interventional radiologists and gynecologists in France and Belgium underscores the positive impact of percutaneous cryoablation, providing much-needed relief for women grappling with abdominal wall endometriosis, which can cause considerable pain and discomfort.1
A new survey found that, although three million women in France suffer from endometriosis, the disease remains largely misunderstood. Just over half of the French population either doesn’t know what it is or recognises the name but doesn’t know anything about the condition, while 95% of the population know little or nothing at all about treatment pathways.2 Endometriosis Awareness Month shines a light on this debilitating disease and new options for treatment.
1Rafy Bachour et al. “Percutaneous cryoablation of abdominal wall endometriosis: An analysis of 38 patients.” Diagnostic and Interventional Imaging (2024) 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmig.2014.02.009
2Sondage OpinionWay for Finn Partners, 14 March 2024.