ATLANTA -- Almost every woman will get a uterine fibroid in their lifetime, and for some reason, they’re more common in African-American women. A first of its kind study is comparing two common treatments for getting rid of fibroids and their problems.

“Just eyeballing it, if the uterus would be up here, it would be a 16-week baby,” said Dr. Abbas Chamsuddin, an Emory Interventional Radiologist.

The MRI shows that it’s not a baby, it’s a uterine fibroid – a non-cancerous tumor of the uterus. Not all uterine fibroids cause symptoms, but when they do, women suffer extreme pressure, bleeding and cramping.

For women who have tremendous symptoms from their fibroids there are really 2 ways to treat them. Surgery, where they remove the uterus, called a hysterectomy, or they can remove portions of the fibroid tumors, called a myomectomy. And then there’s a new procedure, which is an embolization, which is not an operation. It’s really under sterile conditions and the patient is having a cath-based procedure to actually go in, locate the fibroid and take care of them.

A study by the New England Journal of Medicine compared both treatments and found women who had embolization did about as well as those who had surgery – and only had a 10 percent chance of having to have a second procedure.

“The word embolization is really closing the blood supply to an organ,” said Dr. Chamsuddin.

In an embolization, small particles are sent into the artery feeding the fibroid, blocking that artery and cutting off the fibroid’s blood supply.

Dr. Chamsuddin has done hundreds of embolization procedures on uterine fibroids.

“Embolization does not include any scarring or any clotting of the abdominal wall. The amount of down time is very limited, typically the patient spends the night in the hospital and goes home the very next day,” explained Dr. Chamsuddin.

But he warns embolization isn’t for every woman.

“An ideal patient for embolization would be a woman who has completed her family, does not want to have surgery or is as high surgical risks and is having symptoms from fibroids,” Dr. Chamsuddin said.