Analog
Lifer
WASHINGTON -- Most women getting a hysterectomy should keep their ovaries because the common extra step of removing them seems to do no good and might decrease their long-term survival, researchers report.
The study, being published today in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, does not track patients, but uses other data to create a model of the surgery's effects.
Still, the study promises to raise questions from women and their doctors about a procedure long accepted with little evidence to back it.
Some 615,000 hysterectomies -- the surgical removal of all or part of the uterus -- are performed every year. Ninety percent of them are for noncancerous reasons.
More than half of those women also get their ovaries removed as a protective measure against ovarian cancer. There is no evidence about whether ovary removal benefits women who are not at high risk for ovarian cancer, who make up a majority of these surgeries, said Dr. William H. Parker of the University of California-Los Angeles.
Yet most gynecologists consider a protective oophorectomy standard for anyone having her uterus removed after age 45, he said. http://www.detnews.com/2005/health/0508/01/A01-265732.htm
The study, being published today in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, does not track patients, but uses other data to create a model of the surgery's effects.
Still, the study promises to raise questions from women and their doctors about a procedure long accepted with little evidence to back it.
Some 615,000 hysterectomies -- the surgical removal of all or part of the uterus -- are performed every year. Ninety percent of them are for noncancerous reasons.
More than half of those women also get their ovaries removed as a protective measure against ovarian cancer. There is no evidence about whether ovary removal benefits women who are not at high risk for ovarian cancer, who make up a majority of these surgeries, said Dr. William H. Parker of the University of California-Los Angeles.
Yet most gynecologists consider a protective oophorectomy standard for anyone having her uterus removed after age 45, he said. http://www.detnews.com/2005/health/0508/01/A01-265732.htm
