Endometrial thermal balloon ablation under local anesthesia in patients with prosthetic heart valves: a pilot study

We treated eleven cases of high risk surgical candidate women with prosthetic heart valves, complaining of menorrhagia, by thermal balloon ablation under local anesthesia after pharmacological endometrial thinning. Menorrhagia was documented by a validated pad scoring system. All patients were severely anemic at presentation. Nine of them had one valve replaced among these cases, two were restenosic at presentation, one had twice mitral valve replacement. Two of them had two valves replaced. All procedures were performed under local anesthesia supplemented by analgesics, no complications were observed either intraoperatively or during the follow-up of at least 24 months. After two years, thermal balloon ablation proved to be statistically significantly effective in terms of pad score reduction; two patients reported spotting and the rest was hypomenorrheic, none of the group experienced amenorrhea. This technique proved to be safe, feasible and effective under this clinical circumstances.