[Non-therapeutic hysterectomy in Mexican young females with intellectual disability: a problematized reality].

Background: Non-therapeutic hysterectomy in girls and adolescents with intellectual disability (ID) is an acceptable practice, even when there is a lack of prescriptive ethical reason.

Objectives: To determine the magnitude of the practice of hysterectomy in girls and adolescents with ID, and explore the emic factors associated with this procedure.

Material And Methods: Multicenter, intersectoral study with a mixed methods design.

Clinical, Epidemiologic and Ethical Aspects of Hysterectomy in Young Females With Intellectual Disability: A Multi-Centre Study of Public Hospitals in Mexico City.

Non-therapeutic hysterectomy has been performed to this day in Mexican women with intellectual disabilities (IDs), but the rationale for performing the procedure has been rarely submitted to clinical ethics committees. The objectives of the present research were to determine the frequency of hysterectomy and the clinical and epidemiologic characteristics that associated to the indication of hysterectomy in girls and young females with IDs and to analyse the emerging ethical issues related to the procedure. A medical chart review was conducted to identify female patients aged ≤ 25 years who had IDs based on anatomical pathologies and hospital records and underwent hysterectomy between January 2014 and December 2019 in nine high-concentration hospitals in Mexico City.

Informed consent: its importance for retrolective research and medical science progress.

In retrolective research, the information necessary to answer the research question is directly generated from medical records and other clinical-documentary sources. This article analyzes the waiver of informed consent and privacy notice when research is retrolective, from which two lines of argument emerge: one is the physician's duty to protect patient dignity, integrity, right to self-determination and privacy, as well as the confidentiality of the information obtained from him; the other is retrolective research contribution to the control of diseases and society's health improvement. Waiver of informed consent or privacy notice documented in the medical record is important for retrolective research, but it has ethical implications for researchers who do not comply with the rationality and personal responsibility they have before society.

Research and research ethics committees and the obligation for them to operate in accordance with the principle of the social covenant.

The relationship between the social covenant, ethics and scientific research is highly important for society. Economic prosperity and better health are two of the main reasons why society supports science, without society itself being able to determine the nature of the research that is to be implemented; this is decided by Research Committees (RCs) and Research Ethics Committees (RECs). This article analyzes how the work of RCs and RECs must have a social covenant and represent the interests of society in order to promote its trust in research.