Angiographic embolisation in the management of pelvic haemorrhage

Haemorrhage from pelvic veins during obstetric and gynaecological surgery is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. In a recent commentary entitled The Seven Surgeons of King's: a fable by Aesop(1), surgeons from different specialties used techniques peculiar to their own practice to treat a woman with intractable haemorrhage. Could transcatheter arterial embolisation be the 'eighth surgeon'? We describe two cases where embolisation was used to control bleeding when local surgical measures had failed and discuss the use of embolisation in obstetrics and gynaecology.