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2002 JUL 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Unnecessary hysterectomy is less likely to be carried out on affluent women, shows research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Hysterectomy is one of the most common and controversial of all surgical procedures in the developed world. Rates vary from 10 per 10,000 women in Norway to 60 per 10,000 women in North America.
Italian researchers assessed the socioeconomic status of 3141 women living in Rome from hospital discharge records. Age 35 and older, the women had undergone hysterectomy in 1997. The data were plotted against overall hysterectomy rates, and those carried out for benign or malignant disease.
The overall hysterectomy rate was 36.7 for every 10,000 women age 35 and above, which is similar to the rate in England, and almost double that in Scandinavian countries, noted the authors. More than 4 out of 10 operations were carried out for fibroids, a benign womb tumor (leiomyoma). Fibroids were most common in women ...