Great! Let's scare women about something else.

[DemBones DemBones]

The following is my response to a thread in the Science forum. The opening poster posted excerpts from an article and a link to the article. I'm sure this will get more publicity, just like the HRT scares and so many others that affect women.

Here's the link:

http://www.ajc.com/health/content/health/0805/01ovaries.html

and here are a couple of paragraphs from the article.


"Among the 600,000 American women who have hysterectomies each year, thousands may die prematurely of heart disease because doctors removed their ovaries along with their wombs, a new study suggests."

"The analysis found that 9 percent fewer women whose ovaries had been removed between ages 50 and 54 lived to see their 80th birthdays than did those who had hysterectomies during those years but who had kept their ovaries. As many as 18,000 women a year may die prematurely because of ovarian surgery, said Dr. William H. Parker, the study's lead author."


Now my reply:

Since the article includes anecdotal information about one woman whose heart disease MAY be associated with removal of her ovaries, I'd like to present anecdotal evidence of my own: I know an 89 year-old woman who is in excellent health for a woman her age, has never had a heart attack, heart disease, breast cancer, any of that, though her ovaries were removed forty years ago and she's been on hormone replacement treatment ever since. Just to keep things a bit more balanced for the other women reading this!

*************************************************************************************

I read the article and it says precious little about the study, such as methodology, number of subjects, other factors examined, etc. Is this just a case study review or what?

"An editorial (in 'Obstetrics and Gynecology') suggests that although the study must still be confirmed by other research, doctors will now rethink the advice they give about ovary removal, which is called an oophorectomy."

Too bad the emphasis added is mine -- the AJC could have added emphasis to that key phrase. These results are not written in stone.

I'm not convinced doctors rethinking ovary removal is a good thing, given that ovarian cancer is particularly hard to detect until it's quite advanced, meaning patients often die within a few months, regardless of treatment.

The AJC article, by the way, says that women without ovaries cannot get ovarian cancer, which you would think would be the case. But in fact, women without ovaries can and do get primary peritoneal cancer, which is basically ovarian cancer outside the ovaries. However, this is less common than getting ovarian cancer in ovaries, so being ovary-less offers a good bit of protection against a very bad cancer, IMHO.

A MAJOR problem about heart disease in women is that it's very poorly understood, having been thought to behave like heart disease in men. It doesn't. Women, for example, can have microvascular heart disease, which is harder to detect. Women often have very atypical symptoms when having a heart attack as well. Medicine has been inexcusably slow to figure this out.

All women should really read up on particular health risks for women, such as microvascular heart disease and primary peritoneal cancer, ovarian cancer, as well as the very well-publicized breast cancer. Women are also at particular risk for a number of autoimmune diseases, such as lupus erythematosus (usually just called "lupus," but there are also less serious types of lupus; lupus erythematosus is the bad one) and thyroid diseases like Hashimoto's disease. Thyroid disease is very common in women over 50 and many doctors never bother to check a woman's thyroid levels.

Women should be INFORMED but not SCARED. The press is not very responsible about informing, often preferring to scare. We've had to tolerate far too many scare stories about oral contraceptive risks, hormone replacement risks, breast cancer risks, DES exposure risks. You can bet a lot of women who've had oophorectomies will cringe when they hear or read about this study -- it's not as if they can have their ovaries put back in place, after all.

I'm going to call around and see if I can get a copy of the article from 'Obstetrics & Gynecology.' Any OB-GYN's here who could help me out?

Note: I mentioned the AJC here because that's the link given; but the AJC reprinted a story from the Boston Globe. So we can thank the Boston Globe reporter for a skewed article featuring a scare story about one woman who had a hysterectomy with oophorectomy and now has a heart condition, lousy sex life, etc. That is, of course, terrible for her, but it's also anecdotal -- how representative is it?

And the final quotes agreeing with the study? Please note that they're from a
co-author of the study!!! Wow, no doubt he's objective. :eyes:

:rant: over. For now.

[sandnsea]

1. Yes and...

Don't you think hormone screening should be as common place as oh, STD screening before marriage. Which do you supppose really causes more problems? I don't think all women have the exact same levels of hormones which is why some of us have PMS, some don't, some have post-partum depression and some don't. What is so damned hard about getting hormone screenings? Then they'd know what levels of HRT to give us too. Doesn't that make sense?

[DemBones DemBones]

3. Of course it makes sense. Why DON'T they

do it???

[NashVegas]

2. necessity v convenience

Call me a luddite, but I think it's nuts to mess with hormones (of any type, not just reproductive) and other body functions if there's no need to.

Hormones control our bodies' clocks and science is still figuring out how it all works.

[DemBones DemBones]

4. I think there is a real need to have hormone replacement

after oophorectomy, It's not like the gradual decline of hormone production in menopause, it's a steep crash, and many problems result from estrogen deficiency.

But you're right that there is a lot still unknown about hormones and biological clocks, among other things.

[Kat45]

5. Great--like I want to read this after my dr recommended a hysterectomy!

Maybe I won't bother clicking on the article so I won't worry about it even more than I am now. Actually, I'm going for a second opinion next week; I want to see if there are other options, particularly since my dr is very 'old school'.

[DemBones DemBones]

6. When I saw this article I thought of all the women who

are out there in your situation and will read or hear about this study. It makes me so angry that these articles and tv news reports rarely if ever 1) discuss the methodology and sample size of the study, 2) make it clear that studies must be replicated to have real validity. They always manage to find a scary anecdote, though, to make women think the sky is falling.

Good luck with your decision. It's never fun to have to decide about surgery.