The Association Between Hysterectomy and Ovarian Cancer Risk: A Population-Based Record-Linkage Study

Suzanne C Dixon-Suen, Suzanne C. Dixon‐Suen, Penelope M. Webb, Louise F. Wilson, Karen Tuesley, Louise M. Stewart, Susan J. Jordan
Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2019 · vol. 111(10) , pp. 1097–1103 · doi:10.1093/jnci/djz015 · PMID:30753695 · PMC6792101 · W2914438311
Observational OA: bronze CC0 ⤵ 10 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-06 ⓘ

Hysterectomy without oophorectomy was not associated with overall ovarian cancer risk, but was associated with decreased risk for women with endometriosis or fibroids.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Recent studies have called into question the long-held belief that hysterectomy without oophorectomy protects against ovarian cancer. This population-based longitudinal record-linkage study aimed to explore this relationship, overall and by age at hysterectomy, time period, surgery type, and indication for hysterectomy. METHODS: We followed the female adult Western Australian population (837 942 women) across a 27-year period using linked electoral, hospital, births, deaths, and cancer records. Surgery dates were determined from hospital records, and ovarian cancer diagnoses (n = 1640) were ascertained from cancer registry records. We used Cox regression to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between hysterectomy and ovarian cancer incidence. RESULTS: Hysterectomy without oophorectomy (n = 78 594) was not associated with risk of invasive ovarian cancer overall (HR = 0.98, 95% CI = 0.85 to 1.11) or with the most common serous subtype (HR = 1.05, 95% CI = 0.89 to 1.23). Estimates did not vary statistically significantly by age at procedure, time period, or surgical approach. However, among women with endometriosis (5.8%) or with fibroids (5.7%), hysterectomy was associated with substantially decreased ovarian cancer risk overall (HR = 0.17, 95% CI = 0.12 to 0.24, and HR = 0.27, 95% CI = 0.20 to 0.36, respectively) and across all subtypes. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that for most women, having a hysterectomy with ovarian conservation is not likely to substantially alter their risk of developing ovarian cancer. However, our results, if confirmed, suggest that ovarian cancer risk reduction could be considered as a possible benefit of hysterectomy when making decisions about surgical management of endometriosis or fibroids.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Hysterectomy Ovarian Neoplasms Ovarian Neoplasms Adolescent Adolescent Adult Adult Aged Aged Aged, 80 and over Aged, 80 and over Australia Australia Australia Comorbidity Comorbidity Female Female Humans Humans

Citation neighborhood (2-hop)

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. Outer rings show 2-hop neighbours — papers reached through the immediate citers/citees. [ collapse to 1-hop ]

References (34)

Cited by (10)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-10-14T06:08:39.101224+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-05-10T10:23:47.420568+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T21:23:58.330360+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK