TORONTO — Women who want to get pregnant but suffer from problem fibroids -- benign tumours of the uterus -- have a new reason to be optimistic.

A University of Toronto study released Wednesday shows it is possible for women to conceive and deliver a child after undergoing a relatively new treatment called uterine artery embolization.

Doctors had previously been uncertain if successful pregnancy was possible after the treatment.

"The fact that an older group of women with difficult reproductive histories, prior miscarriages, were able to achieve a pregnancy after (this treatment) offers a lot of hope and promise for other women," said U of T epidemiologist Gaylene Pron, one of the authors of the study, which appears in the January issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

She warns, however, that there is no way of determining the odds of a woman getting pregnant after having uterine artery embolization -- a non-surgical procedure in which the blood supply to the fibroids is blocked, thereby shrinking them.

"We don't know what the chances are because we don't have a large enough group of women to report on that," she said.

The findings in the study came about by accident while researchers were monitoring women who had opted for uterine artery embolization as an alternative to hysterectomy.

Of the 555 women between the ages of 27 and 42 who were being monitored, 21 women conceived, three of them twice.

Eighteen went on to deliver babies.

In three of those women, the study revealed, there were problems with the placement of the placenta.

That's an important piece of information for doctors, said Pron.

"Physicians should be conservative with these women and follow them up with ultrasound to ensure that the placentas are fine," she said.

"You want to have a heads-up on these conditions."

The study notes that when dealing with women considering the embolization treatment who also want to get pregnant, "most centres have advocated a cautious approach ... and have generally advised against uterine embolization until more is known."

Pron hopes the study will highlight the fact that larger studies on the issue are needed.

"This is one area where information is really sparse and missing on a very common problem affecting women," she said.

"There's a huge void of evidence... We definitely need to focus in on this area."