Background: There are short of systematical analyze of the late-term
pregnancy proportion of women experiencing postpartum hemorrhage and symptomatic
fibroids following uterine artery embolization (UAE). Methods: This was
a systematic literature review and meta-analysis of existing studies.
Results: In total, we identified 497 pregnancies following UAE; 49
patients chose to abort their pregnancies, 79 miscarried during the early- or
middle-terms of pregnancy, and 378 pregnancies successfully progressed into the
late-term (28 weeks). When considering the included studies, 58.33%–100% of
pregnancies successfully reached the late-term. When considering all studies, the
proportion of subjects achieving a late-term pregnancy was 96% (95% confidence
interval [CI], 90%–100%) when using a random model (I = 21.08,
p 0.001). With regards to the methods used to perform embolization,
the proportion of late-term pregnancies were 92% (95% CI, 79%–100%) in the
absorbable Embosphere group and 88% (95% CI, 79%–95%) in the non-absorbable
Embosphere group. The proportion of patients achieving late-term pregnancy after
UAE was 93% (95% CI, 85%–93%) in the group experiencing postpartum
hemorrhage and 82% (95% CI, 73%–90%) in those with symptomatic fibroids.
Conclusions: Our analyses indicate that patients have a good chance of a
successful pregnancy if they experience postpartum hemorrhage patients and
symptomatic fibroids patients if they wish to preserve their fertility.