'An Intact Woman' by Stanley West M.D.

You don't need a hysterectomy.
It can do you more harm than good.

Those are strong words but the fact is that more than 90 percent of hysterectomies are unnecessary. Worse, the surgery can have long-lasting physical, emotional, and sexual consequences that may undermine your health and well-being. 'Hysterectomy Hoax' is about hysterectomy, the unacceptable risks it poses, and the alternatives available to treat the vast majority of disorders that can lead to surgery.

Hysterectomy is, by definition, the removal of a vital female organ, the uterus. About 40 percent of the time, the ovaries are also removed in the course of surgery. (It's very likely that this percentage is much higher today..). Considering the importance of both these organs, you would assume that a disorder would have to be very serious to justify removing them. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Most of the "female problems" that lead to hysterectomy are medically trivial. They can be uncomfortable. Untreated, some can make your life miserable. But they will not kill you. Why have major surgery to remove an organ (your uterus) or organs (uterus and ovaries) that define you as a woman and are essential to your physical, emotional, and sexual well-being unless your life is in danger? No man would agree to have his sexual and reproductive organs removed for anything short of a life-threatening illness. And no doctor would suggest such a radical course of action.except when the alternative is certain death. It is time for women to recognize hysterectomy for the threat it is and to refuse to have the surgery except when there lives are at stake.

At this point, you must be wondering who I am and why I am so opposed to hysterectomy. I am a gynecologist, a specialist in the treatment of infertility and chief of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at St. Vincent's Hospital, one of New York city's most prestigious medical institutions. In addition to my infertility practice, I have helped hundreds of women avoid hysterectomy. (It is very likely that the number of women Dr. West has helped is far greater today..).

I didn't set out to crusade against hysterectomy. In medical school, I believed what I was taught: that hysterectomy is good for women. Then, and now, prevailing medical wisdom holds that the uterus is a disposable organ that serves no useful purpose once a woman has all the children she wants. What's more, it is regarded as something of a nuisance. Until menopause, a woman with a uterus will have to concern herself with birth control and contend with the discomforts and messiness of menstruation. And, regardless of age, if she is so inclined, she will worry about the remote risk of developing uterine cancer. Hysterectomy will certainly eliminate the nuisance factor of having a uterus. Some doctors emphasize freedom from menstruation and contraception as selling points when they recommend the surgery. But they do not talk about the negative consequences.

It is no secret that many women develop serious health problems after hysterectomy. Depression, fatigue, urinary disorders, joint aches and pains, and unwelcome changes in sexual desire and response are the most common complaints.No one knows for sure why removing the uterus should bring on certain of these problems, and because we have no medical answers - and no useful help - to offer patients, their complaints often are dismissed as psychological. Indeed, medical students are taught that women who attribute symptoms to hysterectomy must be neurotic, hysterical, or obsessed with their uterus. But, as you will see, these problems are very real and have absolutely nothing to do with a woman's mental stability.