Is hysterectomy safe?
In good hands it is quite safe: the overall risks are among the lowest for any major surgery. Complications are possible but uncommon. They include wound infection, haemorrhage from the vaginal wound, damage to bladder or ureters, thrombosis (the formation of blood clots) or chest infection. Complications are more likely when hysterectomy is performed on a badly diseased uterus or when chronic pelvic infection exists. Most occur during the first week. You’ll be regularly checked while in hospital so that any complication can be dealt with promptly.
Rarely, hysterectomy without oöphorectomy before the menopause can lead to cessation of ovarian function if the ovarian blood supply is damaged during surgery.
This results in symptoms of oestrogen deficiency, which must be treated by oestrogen replacement.
Sex after hysterectomy
You’ll be advised not to have sex for about six weeks after surgery. This means penis-in-vagina sex: you can start any other sort of sexual activity as soon as you feel like it, as long as it causes you no discomfort. After healing of the vaginal wound has been confirmed at your post-operative check, you can begin sexual intercourse. Take it gently at first: it may take a few weeks before full activity is comfortable.
You may fear that hysterectomy will shorten your vagina and make sex difficult or impossible. This is not so. Neither you nor your partner should be aware of any difference. The vagina isn’t shortened at all unless it is also diseased and must be partly removed, but even in this case it can be dilated to make sex possible.
Another common fear is that sexual feeling will be reduced or lost after hysterectomy. This rarely happens. The lower end of the vagina, the vulva and the clitoris are the main sources of pleasurable sexual sensation. Contractions of the uterus are part of orgasm, but most women who’ve had a hysterectomy say that the quality of orgasm is no different. Surveys have shown that sex improves for the majority of women after hysterectomy. This isn’t surprising, because before the operation their sexual enjoyment may have been affected by symptoms.
About 15 per cent of women report that their sex life deteriorates after hysterectomy. This may be due to negative expectations and anxiety in the woman (and her partner) about the effect of hysterectomy on her sexuality and sexual response.
Fears about the possible effects of the operation can change a couple’s sexual interaction. If you fear that hysterectomy will make you less sexually attractive, you may be anxious to see how your partner responds. If, from genuine consideration of your convalescence, he makes fewer sexual approaches, you may jump to the conclusion that he finds you less appealing.
Good communication is the answer to settling back to normal sexual activity after hysterectomy (or any surgery). It helps if your partner takes part in discussions with your doctor before the operation, and if you can talk the matter over between yourselves both before and after.
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