Unecessary hysterectomies

February 16, 2004

Leonie,

Thanks for being so vigilant and following up on this question & for this

excellent post, I am sure I will be able to use this information at my

event next week. It just goes to show that we need to be very, very careful

when we are presented with statistics. I think Winston Churchill once said

that there are " lies, d...mned lies and statistics " .

Dr. Broder defined what he meant by unecessary. It actual fact this is a

very complex concept that different people will define in different ways.

We just had a woman of 35 on our German group with a smallish fibroid, but

quite a lot of bleeding, choose a (sub-total) hysterectomy after doing all

her research and reading posts from other women on our board for a year or

so. She decided that she absolutely didn't want to have the fibroids

return. Whilst I honestly would never have made this decision in her shoes,

I can accept that this hysterectomy, whilst not being medically necessary,

may have been necessary for her psychological wellbeing (i.e. knowing that

the fibroids would never return).

I'd be careful of any statistics coming from HERS, or rather, I'd try and

find out where they came from and what they actually mean.

At 00:29 17.02.04 +0000, you wrote:

>Message: 11

> Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 19:11:56 -0000

>

>Subject: Re:To myo or not to myo

>

>I made a mistake in attributing the research on unnecessary

>hysterectomies to Dr. . This research was actually done by

>another member of the Board of Directors of NUFF, Dr.

>Broder. The reference is below if you'd like to see the abstract.

>You may have to cut and paste the URL.

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