Campaign to rename hysterectomy to uterectomy

[SorryWeAreClosed]

I've just noticed a campaign along with open letter to Wes Streeting to rename hysterectomy to uterectomy.

The letter points out the historical misogyny in the naming of this procedure and goes on to state

"This matters for reasons beyond symbolism, though the symbolism matters too. Research shows that ambiguous terminology like hysterectomy is associated with low patient understanding of the procedure. Women frequently do not know whether their cervix will be removed. They do not know whether their ovaries will be retained. They do not understand the hormonal consequences of different types of surgery. The language itself - rooted not in anatomy but in the idea that women's emotions come from their wombs - actively contributes to the confusion and disempowerment that your strategy rightly seeks to address."

This makes a very good point about not being clear about whether ovaries, or indeed cervix will be retained and the hormonal consequences. However, this is a separate issues to renaming the procedure as the name alone makes none of this clear.

I agree that clear language is important, though in this case hysterectomy has been in use forever so it's meaning is understood whereas introducing 'uterectomy' is likely to bring initial confusion.

I note that some of the women who are sharing this campaign are happy to refer to 'top' and 'bottom' surgery. I hope they would be equally as in favour of clear naming and clear descriptions and an eradication of friendly little euphemisms that minimise those types of surgery as for this name change. That would do a lot of good.

My brother had a suprapubic cystotomy yesterday. For the operation to go ahead, he had a consultation with a consultant urologist, lots of leaflets and paperwork and sign posting to various charities and support groups to talk to.

I doubt many people could guess the procedure from the name. I don’t think a more accessible name would make any difference to his care, understanding or wellbeing.

Where is the evidence that changing the name of a ‘hysterectomy’ is the solution to this issues effecting the women involved? I expect there are other aspects of medical practice that, if changed, would improve experiences for the women impacted.

For those now wondering, a suprapubic cystotomy is the procedure used for inserting a suprapubic catheter - a catheter coming directly from the kidney and out through a small opening just above the pubic bone.

At best it seems to reflect a naive idea that we can control material reality just through the use/manipulation of language. Which often seems to manifest as superstitious attempts to police language and leads to ghastly euphemism as described above.

See also men claiming that if they just find the correct word-trickery, the world will have to admit they have actually changed sex.

Fiddling with semantics does little to change systemic issues ime.

I don't think that the Greek hyster base for the word is any more sexed than the word uterus, but it's known as a uterus isn't it.
I think that with the connection to words like hysterical and hysteria and those negative connotations make me more in favour of at least bringing uterectomy etc into more common usage as a term, even if we aren't trying to replace words

^This

Otherwise let’s rename anything lunar to moon because of lunatic.

Women frequently do not know whether their cervix will be removed. They do not know whether their ovaries will be retained. They do not understand the hormonal consequences of different types of surgery.

A operation name is never going to create informed consent. This surely highlights how dismissive doctors are and how little women are told?

Sure, once we've sorted out every other inequality in women's health care 🙄

I’m pretty clued up but recently had a debulking op for Ovarian cancer which is a hysterectomy on steroids. I had no idea my cervix would be removed until Nurse told me not to bath for 8 weeks to avoid getting infection where cervix had gone on day of op. Didn’t make any difference to me as loads went but it was the one thing I was quite surprised about!

Wow, that’s awful! It’s also not standard advice but leaving that aside… I’ve also never encountered a hysterectomy described as debulking, which is usually related to ablation or other procedures on the endometrium. To not tell you what the procedure is is crazy. Are you in the UK? If so I would consider doing a subject access request for the notes so you can see exactly what was done and see what you consented to. Have you received proper information on follow up treatment or managing surgical menopause? Cancer sometimes means HRT isn’t suitable but not always.

It’s a lot bigger than a hysterectomy- I was just comparing as I had my uterus out at same time. I know exactly what they took out! Debulking is name for op they use for ovarian cancer when everything the cancer touches goes including omentum, ovaries, fallopians and in my case spleen, colon and a chunk of stomach! They also scrape the peritoneum. Avoid it if you can 😀

I understood, I have never heard debulking used in that context, thanks for informing me! It sounds awful, my friend went through the same for ovarian cancer though avoided colon and stomach. I’m baffled that they didn’t inform you your cervix would go given how big a procedure it is. Hope you are doing ok.

No girl sorry

In that case it should include cervix and ovaries, because they are usually removed during the procedure.

Cervix removal is common but less than 50% of hysterectomy is for benign conditions includes removing ovaries. Medical preference is to keep pre-menopausal, which is when most benign conditions are dealt with.