Nearly 50 doctors across the United States sent an open letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday calling on the agency to “revise or rescind” its position on a controversial device that had been used on more than 50,000 women annually until the agency cautioned against it last year.
The device, known as a laparoscopic power morcellator, had been widely used to remove benign growths known as fibroid tumors from the uterus or to completely remove the uterus itself in a hysterectomy. A power morcellator has tiny, high-speed blades that mince tissue into infinitesimal pieces, allowing doctors to perform the entire procedure minimally invasively, removing unwanted tissue through small incisions.
