Opinion on Women's Health Abroad: Topic: Hysterectomy

Should hysterectomy mean the ovaries come out too? | Reuters: "The current study included more than 25,000 women age 50 to 79. Researchers followed the women for an average of 7 to 8 years to determine how many were diagnosed with ovarian cancer, heart disease, or a hip fracture.

Ovarian cancer was very rare in both groups of women -- 1 in 300 women who only had a hysterectomy were diagnosed with the disease, compared to 1 in 5,000 women who had their ovaries removed with the hysterectomy.

The authors calculated that 323 women would have needed to have their ovaries removed to prevent each case of ovarian cancer.

Both groups of women were diagnosed with heart disease and hip fractures at similar rates, and about the same amount of women in both groups died during the study - 8 of every 1,000 women each year."