The impact of age and parity on the experience of relief and regret in women who have undergone hysterectomy for benign disease: A cross sectional survey.

Objective: To investigate the impact of age and parity on the experience on relief and regret following elective hysterectomy for benign disease, and to explore the factors that impact relief and regret.

Design: Retrospective cross-sectional survey of a cohort.

Setting: Single-centre tertiary hospital in Melbourne, Australia.

Population: Patients who underwent elective hysterectomy for benign indications from 01 January 2008 - 31 July 2015 (inclusive) with age <51 years at time of admission.

Methods: Eligible participants completed a retrospective survey regarding their experience of relief and regret following hysterectomy.

Main Outcome Measures: Regret was defined as a positive response to "Do you regret the decision to have a hysterectomy?". Relief was defined as responding "agree/strongly agree" to "I feel relieved I had a hysterectomy".

Results: 268 of 1285 (21%) eligible participants completed the study questionnaire. Of these, 29 were aged <36 years at the time of hysterectomy. Seven percent (n=18/262) reported regretting having a hysterectomy and 88% (n=230/262) reported experiencing relief. We did not observe associations between age at hysterectomy and regret (aOR 0.93; 95% CI 0.85, 1.03), age at hysterectomy and relief (aOR 1.01; 95% CI 0.93, 1.09), nulliparity and regret (aOR 0.32; 95% CI 0.06, 1.59) or nulliparity and relief (aOR 2.37; 95% CI 0.75, 7.51). Desire for future pregnancy at the time of hysterectomy was more frequently reported in those who experienced regret vs no regret (46.7% vs 12.1%, OR: 6.33; 95% CI: 2.12, 18.90; p=0.001).

Conclusions: Age and parity are not associated with relief nor regret following elective hysterectomy for benign disease.