Clinical and pathologic characteristics of women undergoing hysterectomy after tubal sterilization.

Abstract

To examine differences in clinical and pathologic characteristics between women undergoing hysterectomy who had had prior tubal sterilization and those who had not. One thousand eight hundred fifty-one women undergoing hysterectomy were enrolled as part of a multicenter, prospective cohort study. We used logistic regression to describe the association between prior tubal sterilization and patient characteristics at hysterectomy. Although sterilized women were not more likely than nonsterilized women to have a menstrual disorder as a presenting complaint, they were more likely to have a primary discharge diagnosis of menstrual disorder (odds ratio [OR] 1.5, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.2-2.0). After adjustment for menstrual indices, sterilized women had an increased probability of having normal findings on pathologic examination, which differed by age (women less than 30 years: OR 3.4, 95% CI 2.0-5.8; women 30 years of age and older: OR 1.7, 95% CI 1.3-2.3). Differences in clinical and pathologic characteristics between sterilized and nonsterilized women suggest that nonbiologic factors may influence decision making regarding hysterectomy among sterlized women.