Reported symptoms before and one year after hysterectomy in African American and white women.

Purpose: Although African American women are more likely than white women to undergo hysterectomy, there are few data describing their symptoms before and after surgery. This report compares reported symptoms in white and African American women before and 1-year after having a hysterectomy with at least one ovary retained.

Methods: Using data from a prospective cohort study, we compared self-reported symptoms at baseline and 1-year follow-up among 382 women undergoing hysterectomy without bilateral oophorectomy (197 African American and 185 white) and 448 controls (199 African American and 249 white). Symptoms were assessed using an 11-item scale with questions on somatic, psychologic, and urogenital symptoms.

Results: Women undergoing hysterectomy had more severe symptom scores before surgery than controls, but no significant racial differences were found. At follow-up, total scores for women with hysterectomies were comparable to those of control women, but some differences were observed within individual domains. Urogenital scores were worse for women with hysterectomies for both African American and white women. African American women with hysterectomies had better scores in the psychologic domain than either controls or white women with hysterectomies.

Conclusions: African American women, despite having such characteristics as larger uterine weight and lower hemoglobin that might suggest they would have more severe symptoms, had scores that were no worse than white women both before and after hysterectomy.