Unnecessary hysterectomy

These new connections quickly translated into ongoing support, encouragement, and friendships with very special women whose hysterectomy stories had to be told. I wanted women facing the possibility of hysterectomy to be afforded a glimpse into the lives of women who had been through the procedure and who were willing to share their innermost secrets in the hope of sparing others from an irreversible, often unnecessary, surgery. This book is about women hoping to help other women.

As the contributions poured in and I read each story for the first time, I was astounded, both at the wealth of information these women provided and at the many parallels to my own experience. I wasn't alone after all. I immediately felt a strong bond with all the contributors who, like me, are determined to find their way back to better health.

We know that many women who have hysterectomies feel absolutely wonderful afterwards. But large numbers of women have had markedly negative experiences with hysterectomy, and growing numbers of hysterectomized women are now speaking out about the ill effects of this drastic surgery. It may well be that those glowing reports on the positive outcomes of hysterectomies are not entirely accurate. Very little information is available about the outcome of surgery from the patient's perspective. Without more and better research into the long-term effects of female castration, women cannot truly give informed consent to this operation.

In the past, women typically kept quiet about personal health-related issues such as sexual dysfunction, mood swings, menstrual problems, and depression. I know my mother would have had tremendous difficulty discussing these subjects with any doctor. In her day, it was simply not done. Today's women are more open. I feel strongly that discussing the potential negative effects of hysterectomy is key to slowing the alarming rate at which this surgical procedure is performed.

Hysterectomy appears to be one of the most popular and often unnecessary surgical procedures of the 1990s and into the new millennium. In Canada alone, for instance, sixty-two thousand hysterectomies are performed each year. This represents one of the highest rates in the world, second only to the United States, where roughly seven hundred thousand are performed annually, and almost double the rate of most European countries. In fact, 37 percent of Canadian women will have had a hysterectomy by the age of sixty. By that same age, one in every three women in the United States has had a hysterectomy; by age sixty-five, the proportion increases to one out of two. Most of these procedures, as many as 90 percent, are elective. And, argues Dr. Stanley West, author of The Hysterectomy Hoax, nine out of ten hysterectomies are unnecessary.