Deadly Medicine: A Common Surgery For Women and the Cancer It Leaves Behind

By The Wall Street Journal

Since the 1990s, thousands of women have undertaken a surgical procedure that may have risked their lives.

After Dr. Amy Reed had surgery to remove uterine fibroids, involving a procedure known as power morcellation, she learned that it had worsened her prognosis by spreading a cancer she and her doctors didn't know she had.

Dr. Reed became a vocal critic of power morcellators and the doctors who used them, dividing the medical community. Now doctors and companies are waiting for more-permanent guidance from the FDA.

This story, drawn from ongoing coverage in The Wall Street Journal, is a gripping human-interest account of public trust and the fallibility of modern medicine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wall Street Journal
• Release date: Dec 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311782212

Book preview

Introduction

In mid-2013, anesthesiologist Amy Reed was 40 years old and feeling near her peak. After more than a decade of academic studies and training, she and her husband had jobs at prominent Boston hospitals and teaching positions at Harvard Medical School. They were settled with their six children in a comfortable suburb, and she had recently run a half-marathon. The years of sacrifice and piles of school debt were starting to give way to a busy, expansive, enviable life.

Only a few months later, she would be diagnosed with a deadly cancer and learn that a choice made by her own doctors worsened her prognosis. The experience would upend her life, turning her into a vocal critic of her own profession and the face of a nationwide medical debate.

At its center is a surgical device called a laparoscopic power morcellator. The tool was being used on tens of thousands of women a year to remove common but painful uterine growths called fibroids without a full understanding of its potential to spread hidden cancer. Doctors rarely informed patients of the device’s risks, and federal regulators had no dependable system in place to monitor possible hazards.

Little wonder then that Dr. Reed became a target of both admiration and ire. Some would embrace her as a fierce advocate, helping to save women’s lives and demanding more accountability in medicine. Others would come to see her and her husband as impolitic and even dangerous crusaders.

Initially, I was very reticent to put our names out there, to put our institutions out there, Dr. Reed says. But the public needed a face, and who better than two doctors?

CH1_HEADING

In the summer of 2013, Dr. Reed’s gynecologist told her that the irregular bleeding she had been experiencing was nothing to worry about. Her condition was clearly a benign diagnosis, Michael Muto wrote in his report of her September visit, which was reviewed among Dr. Reed’s medical records by The Wall Street Journal. Dr. Muto noted her symptoms could be traced to a large fibroid. (Dr. Muto has declined to comment on the case, citing a pending complaint Dr. Reed has filed with the state medical board.) He referred his patient to a surgeon who could perform an increasingly common, minimally invasive