What are the real facts about hysterectomy?

The following facts are taken from the HERS Foundation website, an independent non-profit international women’s health education organization that provides full, accurate information about hysterectomy, its adverse effects and alternative treatments.

Here are some FACTS

FACT: Women experience a loss of physical sexual sensation as a result of hysterectomy.

FACT: A woman’s vagina is shortened, scarred and dislocated by hysterectomy.

FACT: Hysterectomy’s damage is life-long. Among its most common consequences, in addition to operative injuries are:

• heart disease


• osteoporosis


• bone, joint and muscle pain and immobility


• loss of sexual desire, arousal, sensation


• painful intercourse, vaginal damage


• displacement of bladder, bowel, and other pelvic organs


• urinary tract infections, frequency, incontinence


• chronic constipation and digestive disorders


• altered body odor


• loss of short-term memory


• blunting of emotions, personality changes, despondency, irritability, anger, reclusiveness and suicidal thinking

FACT: No drugs or other treatments can replace ovarian or uterine hormones or functions. The loss is permanent.

FACT: Most women are castrated at hysterectomy. The medical term for the removal of the ovaries is castration.

FACT: The uterus and ovaries function throughout life in women who have not been hysterectomized or castrated.

FACT: Twice as many women in their 20’s and 30’s are hysterectomized as women in their 50’s and 60’s.

FACT: 98% of women HERS has referred to board-certified gynecologists after being told they needed hysterectomies, discovered that, in fact, they did not need hysterectomies.

FACT: Gynecologists, hospitals and drug companies make more than 5 billion dollars a year from the business of hysterectomy and castration.

How often are hysterectomies performed?

• Hysterectomy is now the second most frequently performed surgery on women in the U.S.
• More than 1 in 4 U.S. women will have a hysterectomy by the time they are 60 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
• The United States has one of the highest rates of hysterectomy in the world, with about 5 out of every 1,000 women each year having the operation, according to the CDC.
• In England, 22% of physicians routinely remove ovaries by age 49 as opposed to 81% of American physicians.
• Other industrialized countries show lower rates; in England, for example, the rate is less than 3 per 1,000 women annually. In Norway, it’s less than 2 in 1,000.
• Up to 60,000 hysterectomy operations are carried out on women in the UK every year.
• And every year, approximately 30,000 Australian women will undergo a hysterectomy, 20% of which will also have one or both of their ovaries removed (oophorectomy).
• In the vast majority of these cases, the indications for surgery are benign, non life-threatening conditions.
• This procedure is rarely performed for reasons of saving life, but it can be a permanent cure for some gynaecological cancers. Only 10% of hysterectomies are performed for cancer. It can and does help to ease many gynaecological complaints, including heavy and/or painful periods, endometriosis, etc.

What risks are associated with hysterectomy?

Risk and complication associated with hysterectomy can be significant.

Depending on the type of hysterectomy performed, bowel and bladder problems/damage, stress urinary incontinency, early ovarian failure, constipation, fatigue, changes in sexual interest and function, and depression may occur.

Risks can also include such problems as infection, bleeding, drug reactions, blood clots, loss of sensation, loss of limb function, paralysis, stroke, brain damage, heart attack or death.

Hysterectomy mortality rates from 6 to 11 per 10,000 cases for patients without malignant or obstetric abnormalities.

Therefore, if you have concerns regarding these risks or if you have had problems with anesthesia in the past, you should definitely discuss this with both your surgeon and anesthesiologist/anesthetist.

Does age play a role in hysterectomy?

Women at highest risk of undergoing hysterectomy are those between age 40 and 45, while the lowest risk is among women aged 15 to 24.

Fifty-five percent of the hysterectomies performed during the 1980 and 1993 period were on women between the ages of 35 and 49.

The most educated women tend to have a lower cumulative risk of hysterectomy than their peers.

Hysterectomies for benign diagnoses, when the decision to operate may be more influenced by social factors, tend to be carried out at a younger age than those for cancer, when the decision is more likely to be made on medical grounds.

Hysterectomies for menstrual bleeding, for example, have been shown to be diametrically related to social class and education, and have become more common at younger ages. This could account for the greater social discrepancies in hysterectomy at younger rather than older ages.

Is health insurance a deciding factor?

High hysterectomy rates often occur where women’s medical care is paid on an insurance-covered fee for service basis, as opposed to women in health maintenance organisations (HMO). In the insurance scenario, a major surgery is much more lucrative for the doctor than a less invasive one.

Indeed, there are powerful economic incentives for ob/gyn doctors and surgeons to recommend hysterectomies to women as an easy solution to routine gynecological problems, simply preventing cancer, or as a permanent method of birth control. These procedures are more profitable than less complicated, and often less dangerous procedures.

The ‘must read’ publication The New Our Bodies, Ourselves hypothesizes that because of the declining birth rate and resulting loss of obstetrical fees, physicians are trying to recompensate financially by increasing the frequency with which the costly procedures of hysterectomies and oophorectomies are performed. The average cost of a hysterectomy varies from $3,000 to $6,000, which is about fives times the cost of a tubal ligation.

One can see a physician’s financial incentive to recommend these procedures if there is any condition that can be remedied by the removal of the uterus and/or ovaries, even if there are many other less dangerous and extreme procedures available.

Bottom line

For many women, the removal of their uterus and ovaries is problematic not only because it may be an unwarranted intrusion into their bodies, but because it involves interference with the parts of their body within which many believe their womanhood resides.

With a high rate of complications and a reputation of overuse, women have right to be wary of it.

Alternative treatments from drug therapy to minor surgery and exercise to acupuncture have been used with differing success, and are all appropriate options for many women. But hysterectomy will always have its place in proper medical care.