Despite two years’ worth of data indicating that a surgical tool used in gynecologic surgeries may actually spread cancer, Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital continued using it until December 2013, after acknowledging the device had spread cancer in two of its patients, according to The Wall Street Journal (11/23/14).

In March, the Harvard University-affiliated hospital became one of the first in the country to stop using the laparoscopic power morcellator, according to WSJ. The hospital publicly acknowledged that morcellation surgery spread cancer in one woman in 2012 and another in 2013.

Morcellation surgery shreds uterine tissue so it can be removed through laparoscopic incisions. But it has been suspected that the power morcellator actually can spread undetected uterine cancer throughout the abdomen.

“If you cut the tumor in pieces inside of the abdomen, there is the potential of spread of the cancer throughout the abdomen, so that makes the stage of cancer more advanced,” according to Temple University Hospital Dr. Enrique Hernandez.

According to the WSJ, the power morcellator cuts up and removes tissue during “minimally invasive procedures to treat fibroids, which are common benign growths. The growths, however, are sometimes a cancer that can’t be reliably detected before surgery. Morcellation can send pieces of malignant tissue into other parts of the abdomen, significantly reducing a woman’s chance of long-term survival, the FDA said.”

Erica K. had a morcellation hysterectomy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2012, and died a year later, at age 52, when an undetected cancer “inadvertently was morcellated,” according to her husband.

Days after the surgery, Erica learned she had leiomyosarcoma, rare cancerous tumor of the smooth muscle cells.

“The morcellation ‘seeded her abdomen’with cancer and quickly made an aggressive disease even worse,” Dana-Farber Cancer Institute sarcoma expert Dr. Suzanne George, who treated Kaitz, told WSJ.

Brigham changed its practice after a second patient had a morcellation hysterectomy in October 2013 for a “clearly benign diagnosis” of fibroids, and afterward was told she had cancer. That patient’s cancer is currently in remission.

The FDA is currently studying whether to ban the device altogether. The agency previously issued a safety advisory after analyzing data that showed morcellation surgery may cause the spread of unsuspected cancerous tissue outside the uterus.

One in 350 women who undergo a robotic hysterectomy or myomectomy (the removal of uterine fibroids) are diagnosed with uterine sarcoma. There are some 50,000 women annually who undergo hysterectomy morcellation surgery.

Uterine fibroids are noncancerous growths of the uterus that often appear during childbearing years. They are not associated with an increased risk of uterine cancer and almost never develop into cancer, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Brigham officials have said they shared the widely held belief at the time that the benefits of morcellation surgery outweighed the risks for most patients thought to have fibroids.

“We now believe that we had an under-appreciation of the risk,” the hospital said in a statement.

Researchers found 1,091 incidents of Brigham patients who underwent morcellation to remove presumed fibroids between 2005 and 2010 and determined that women had a 1 in 546 chance of having sarcoma, similar findings to what the FDA later found, according toWSJ.

Class action lawsuit lawyers are currently seeking women who were diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma (LMS), uterine sarcoma or other cancer within two years after their initial surgery to remove fibroids, the uterus, ovaries or fallopian tubes.