The HERS Conference: Dr. Levine Delivers the Truth

The HERS conference last Saturday delivered a mountain of information in an atmosphere charged with sadness. Much of the audience was in tears listening to women tell about how they had become victims of doctors who continue to ignore the facts about avoidable hysterectomies.

In this first report on the conference, I'm focusing on Dr. Mitchell Levine, a remarkable, Boston-based gynecologist whom we would clone if we could. Here's my report:

Dr. Mitchell Levine, who teaches at the Tufts and Harvard Schools of Medicine, doesn't look much different from other tanned and fit 57-year old male doctors. But when he talks about women and their fate as victims of hysterectomy and removal of their ovaries, his tone because so respectful, even reverential, that it is unexpected, almost shocking.

"It's too sacred, it's too complex, to just take things out," he is saying as he sweeps a laser pointer over a full-color diagram of a woman's internal organs. But, he continues, taking a uterus out is so easy to do: "Clamp, clamp, clamp, clamp. Done." He demonstrates with four quick clenches of his hands.

Levine is speaking at the 28th conference of the HERS Foundation in a Manhattan hotel. He's telling the truth about the consequences of this surgery and why he believes that "at least" 90 percent of the 600,000 done each year could be avoided with other treatments, some as simple and cost-free as waiting.

It's a huge contrast to the paternalistic advice most women get: Your uterus is just a cradle. Done having children? Then you don't need it any more. But you'll still have the playpen! Wink. Wink.

And: You'll love life after your hysterectomy. No more periods!

And: If I end up taking out your ovaries, just think, no more risk of ovarian cancer!

"It's part of their training," Dr. Levine explains to me. "That these (the ovaries) are ticking time bombs. Instead, you end up shortening (a woman's) life because you've increased her risk of heart disease." Yes, that's right, a woman 40 to 44 whose ovaries are removed or which stop functioning as a result of a hysterectomy (that happens in better than one in 10 cases) faces twice the risk of heart disease as a woman with intact ovaries. This added risk more than outweighs the possibility of ovarian cancer, according to medical studies.

"Can you imagine if a man went to a doctor for a benign condition and the doctor said, 'I can fix that by cutting your nuts off?'" Levine asked with a laugh.

"He'd turn right around and walk away."

Indeed. Men would never voluntarily give up their virility, their joy in sex, to cure a non-life-threatening problem. They have no confusion about the fact that their organs are sex organs, not just baby-makers. Yet, women's organs have been labeled by the medical profession as "reproductive" instead of sexual, and the medical professions is more interested in us as baby factories than as sexual beings. So they talk us into castration for non-life-threatening fibroids and bleeding that can be managed in other ways. And we enjoy sex less as a result, some of us losing most if not all of our libido and some or most of our ability to feel sexual stimulation.

The situation has become more perilous for women as new surgical techniques make it possible to do hysterectomies on an outpatient basis.

Levine goes into detail about this. There's the traditional way, via a long abdominal incision; and then there are the newer ways, via the vagina or laparoscopically through small, abdominal incisions. For the small percentage of women who truly need their organs removed, these techniques are better, shortening recovery time from the surgery.

But regardless of how the surgery is done, there are the same consequences for women who could have avoided it. No matter how it's done, says Levine, removing the uterus "is still cutting the ligaments and the blood supply" to not just the uterus but to other organs as well.

As a result, 10 to 15 percent of women who have only their uterus removed lose the function of their ovaries anyway, apparently because of the loss of blood supply. This plunges them, whether they are 25 or 45, into an immediate and crushing menopause.

Furthermore, the ligaments that are cut are critical to the support of the bladder and bowel. When the uterus is removed, it leaves an empty space, and lacking their previous support, the other organs can sag and lean on each other. Urinary and bowel problems become much more likely.

The most common reason for hysterectomy is fibroids. But when Dr. Levine sees women with fibroids, hysterectomy is the last thing on his mind.

"For example, if a routine exam shows a fibroid, but the woman has no symptoms, I reassure her and say, 'See me in a year.'

"Or, if she's bleeding a lot but it's manageable, I just tell her to take some iron and wait" if she is near menopause. Estrogen, he explained, makes fibroids grow, and because estrogen levels drop at menopause, fibroids will then shrink.

If the bleeding is severe and menopause too far off, Dr. Levine may do surgery to remove them, leaving the uterus and ovaries intact.

Women at the conference asked what Dr. Levine would do if a woman had multiple fibroids--30 or even 50--or if some of them were very large. He answered that it didn't matter. He could still remove them, explaining that they are usually in a sort of capsule, like a hard boiled egg, and pop out when the capsule is cut.

But here's the kicker: Even though it takes longer to cut out fibroids and stitch the uterus back together than to do a hysterectomy--clamp, clamp, clamp, clamp--Dr. Levine gets paid less money to do the conserving surgery than to hollow out a woman's insides.

As U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney said at the conference, "Where is the outrage?"

Evidence Ignored by Doctors Removing Women's Ovaries

I have been deeply affected by the comments of women in response to my last blog about hysterectomy. Their lives have been devastated by--what should I call them? Ignorant? Arrogant? Unethical? Unprofessional? All of these?--doctors who continue to remove healthy ovaries from women in the face of evidence that they are causing irreparable harm to their patients.

Spurred by these comments, and by my need to prepare to attend the HERS Hysterectomy Conference this coming Saturday, I did some research and found a smoking gun right on the website of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It's an August, 2005 article (scroll down the search page to the 7th article) that appeared in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology. Apparently, it's not required reading for the practicing physicians who continue to castrate women.

Called "Ovarian Conservation at the Time of Hysterectomy for Benign Disease," it takes a comprehensive look at the risks and benefits of removing a woman's ovaries at the same time that she has a hysterectomy for non-cancerous problems like fibroids and heavy bleeding. As far as I can tell at this point, it appears to be one of the latest investigations of the issue, which, despite its importance to women, has not been the subject of much research at all.

Here are some of the conclusions:

• At no age is there any clear benefit to women from removal of the ovaries (oophorectomy).
  
• "For women younger than 65 at the time of surgery, oophorectomy increases the risk of dying from coronary heart disease."
• Evidence from the Nurses' Health Study says that the risk of heart attack was doubled if the women in question were between 40 and 44 years old; and up 40% if the women were older than 50.
• After losing their ovaries, women have higher bad cholesterol levels, higher blood pressure and more hardening of the arteries.
  
• Women who were past menopause when they had an oophorectomy ended up with 54% more bone fractures due to osteporosis than women with intact ovaries.
• The fractures often were of the hip, and having a hip fracture between ages 60 and 64 meant dying early--a loss of 11 years of life!
• It also means that many of those women could never leave their homes again on their own. One study found that before breaking a hip, 28 percent of the women were housebound; after the fracture, 46 percent were housebound.
  

So why do doctors continue to castrate women?

I certainly have no satisfactory answer to that.

But some, apparently, believe that the overriding benefit is to reduce a woman's chance of getting ovarian cancer. But this study notes that removal of the uterus alone lowers the risk of ovarian cancer by 40% below the level of women who retain their uterus.

So, let's see: since men have a risk of testicular cancer, should doctors be removing their testicles just in case? Or treating them with female hormones to reduce the risk of prostate cancer?

We women know that would never happen. Men prize their virility and do everything to keep it. Women prize their sexuality, too, but consent to hysterectomy and oopherectomy too often without realizing what they will be giving up. Thus the need for the HERS Foundation video and consent only after seeing it.

So, is it ignorance of the facts that keeps doctors castrating women? Or what? Theories--and certainly facts--welcome.

Tell the Truth About Hysterectomy!

Do women really get the whole truth about hysterectomy before consenting to this all-too common procedure? I know I didn't.

Nora Coffey, head of the HERS foundation, has been convinced for years that women do not realize that they will certainly lose some sexual feeling; will likely have problems with their bladders and bowels; that they may suffer back pain and see their waists enlarge as their internal organs and bones shift in place because where their uterus used to be is now an empty space. In the years since I underwent a hysterectomy in my mid-40s, I have suffered all of these symptoms, and my doctor never mentioned a single one. (It was a woman, by the way.)

On Friday, April 24, the foundation will hold its 28th Hysterectomy Conference at the Hilton New York Hotel in Manhattan to focus attention on an effort to require that women learn about all the possible consequences of hysterectomy before consenting to the procedure. The conference will feature an Indiana state legislator who is the first to introduce legislation requiring such disclosure.

And, the keynote address will be given by U.S. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York who will reportedly raise the issue of unnecessary hysterectomies in the House-Senate Joint Economic Committee, which she chairs. Experts estimate the cost of unnecessary hysterectomies at $17 billion a year.

I'll be covering the meeting for womensenews, a non-profit that specializes in news of particular interest to women.

But in this case, I certainly think that men would like to know about a medical procedure that will most definitely affect their sex lives along with their female partners!

The HERS foundation is advocating that women be required to view an 11-minute video it produced before consenting to hystserectomy. The video shows in a very matter-of-fact manner, using only color diagrams and voice-over-text, the story of female anatomy that somehow got left out of all our high school health classes.

"Women who watch that get it: they understand this is very serious surgery," says Coffey, who believes requiring the video is the only way to bring down the number of women who lose their uterus every year. As I've blogged about before, an astounding one out of every three American women have had surgery to remove their uterus by the time they are 60, and of those, 75% also lose their ovaries, the equivalent of male castration.

There is precedent for requiring the showing of videos: Utah, for example, requires women who are seeking an abortion to see one. Drug companies are required to put informative inserts into packages of medication, for example in birth control pills, thanks to the historic efforts of women's advocates including Barbara Seaman.

Losing your uterus is not like losing a tooth. Lose a tooth, and you can still chew with the others or get a false one to take its place. Each woman get's only one uterus, and it's so much an integral part of our bodies that you don't even realize you'll miss it until it's gone. And then, it's too late.