Our ref: TO1042780

22 December 2003

Department of Health
Wellington House
113-155 Waterloo Road
LONDON
SE1 2UG

Dear

Your letter to Alan Milburn dated 12 May 2003 regarding hysterectomy rates has been passed to me for reply.

Statistics of hysterectomies are derived from alectronic in-patient records. There are collected for financial years ir for 12-month periods April to March eg 201-02 data relate to the period 1st April 201 to 31st March 2002.

The number of hysterectomies reported reached a peak in the mid-1990s of about 70,000 per year but has been falling rapidly; in 2000-01 there were fewer than 45,000. Full details are in the table at the end of this letter. We do not collect direct information about reasons for the operations, but the records do not include the principal diagnoses associated with the operation. For 2001-02, these show that about half of the hysterecto,ies performed in that year were associated with benign growths in the genital organs and most of all of the remainder with cancer of the genital organs. Hysterectomies associated with childirth were reported in only 26 cases, of which 17 included postpartum haemorrhage. I have checked the data also for 2000-01, 1999-2000 and 1995-96 and the number of cases are about the same; in total, cases associated with childbirth account for well under one-tenth of one percent of all hysterectomies.

Collegues in the Department of Health wrote to you in 2001 about he Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) guidance on hysterectomy and informed consent. The reduction in hysterectomies sugggests that the RCOG guidance is increasingly being acted on by the profession

Yours sincerely

(pp signature)

Lesz Lancucki
Statistician

Hysterectomy operations in NHS hospitals in England 1990-91 to 2001-02

note that figures for earlier years have not been adjusted for under-reporting

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