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Removal of uterus increases risk of urinary incontinence

Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have shown that hysterectomy - a common operation involving the removal of the uterus - greatly increases the risk of urinary incontinence. Their results, which come from a nationwide study, are presented in The Lancet.

Hysterectomy is the most common gynaecological abdominal operation in the world. It is normally performed as a cure for benign medical problems in order to improve life quality for the patients. However, the long-term effects are largely unknown, and it has long been suspected that the operation increases the risk of developing urinary incontinence, in many respects a very disabling condition that affects hundreds of thousands of women in Sweden.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now shown that women who have had a hysterectomy are more than twice as likely to undergo surgery for urinary incontinence as women with intact uteri.

“It’s important that gynaecologists take this into account ahead of a hysterectomy, and the patients should themselves be aware of the greater risk the operation entails, particularly if they belong to a high-risk group,” says Daniel Altman, gynaecologist and one of the researchers behind the study.

The highest likelihood of incontinence surgery was noted within five years of the removal of the uterus, but the higher risk remains throughout the patients’ lives. The risk increased most for women who had a hysterectomy before their menopause or after having undergone several deliveries.

The study was based on analyses of patient registers for the years 1973 to 2003, and incorporated over 165,000 women who have had hysterectomies and almost 479,000 women who have not.

Publication:

Daniel Altman, Fredrik Granath, Sven Cnattingius och Christian Falconer

Hysterectomy and risk of stress urinary incontinence surgery: nationwide cohort study

The Lancet, 27 oktober 2007, ref 370: 1494-1499.

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Here is an excellent post called How do you reassure a worried patient with fibroids?It covers all the usual options that medical science can offer, besides hysterectomy and is written by a practicing GP, Dr. Tanvir Jamil.

There are other ways to deal with fibrods, some of them are described on this very site, such as:

Homeopathic Treatment For Uterine Fibroids

Herbal Remedies For Uterine Fibroids etc.

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There is a great discomfort about request to have a hysterectomy on a disabled child. A British mother desires her severely disabled 15 year old daughter to have a hysterectomy in order to avoid the discomfort of periods. Naturally, many are opposed to this idea, read the news here. Here is the opposite point of view — the girl’s uterus is healthy, so maybe periods won’t be a distress after all!?

Here is yet another voice of doubt.

Do you need that hysterectomy!? is a fair appraisal of the alternatives that exist for the hysterectomy today.

If women new more about their anatomy and physiology, they would make informed decisions about hysterectomy, the HERS foundation believes. They are organizing their 26th conference soon:

ERS TWENTY-SIXTH HYSTERECTOMY CONFERENCE
Saturday, November 3, 2007, 8:30am-6:00pm
The Westin Pasadena, Plaza Room
191 North Los Robles
Pasadena, CA 91101
Open to the public

For more info, click here to go the their blog.

Hysterectomy can really have disastrous consequences upon your sex life. Furthermore, it can ruin long term marriages, read the awakening testimonials here.

If you are in the USA, this short, short list of hysterectomy resources by Washington Post might come handy to you.

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After you’ve had your hysterectomy, sooner or later you count on severe hormonal disturbances. If they took your ovaries out as well, then it will be a surgical menopause, and even if the ovaries are left in, they start degrading in function after a year or two. Progesterone has direct influence on the brain, and estrogen makes the walls of your arteries and veins more flexible. If you do not have these hormones, the brain will suffer. Many women will have certain loss of memory, or will not be able to choose the right word on the spot, after a hysterectomy.

In this blog entry, When You Just Ain’t Right, on the blog called RealMental, author Bellinda enumerates the many troubles she’s been through, and one of which was having a hysterectomy. Here is what she thinks of the hormones part:

“And then there’s the hormone angle, which I don’t even know for sure how to approach. Something has GOT to be going on there, since the weirdness has escalated by, um, a bunch, since my hysterectomy last fall. When I first came out of surgery, on estrogen deprivation, I literally felt, for the first and only time in my life, that I had lost my mind. It’s like nothing I can describe–the misery, despair, agony, anxiety–the certainty that it’s never going to be better, ever. After a couple of weeks, I was able to start estrogen replacement therapy, and it was like a miracle…at least to a point. It made the extreme crazy go away, but like I said at the beginning of this post, I still ain’t quite right. But then, I’ve never had the dosage checked or adjusted, so there’s a thought…”

This is exactly why we here, at this blog How To Avoid Hysterectomy, advise women not to have hysterectomy unless they absolutely have to. A woman’s body is a finely tuned mechanism and any prolonged emotional disturbance will reflect as a gynecological disorder. This is precisely why taking Lupron and other medications leads to hysterectomy — they just cover up the symptoms, never do they charge upon the real cause of the disorder. For emotional disturbances take remedies such Bach flower remedies, eventually clean up the mess using either the conventional or alternative medicine and you’ll start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

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