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Does hysterectomy lead to stress incontinence? Small studies have yielded inconsistent results. Swedish researchers used large databases to compare two cohorts, one consisting of 165,200 women who underwent hysterectomy for benign indications from 1973 through 2003, and another of 479,500 age-matched women who did not. Women who had surgery for stress incontinence before a hysterectomy were excluded.
Women with hysterectomies were more than twice as likely to have subsequent surgery for stress incontinence than women without hysterectomies, a highly significant difference. Increased risk was particularly pronounced in women younger than 44 and in those 58 or older at the time of hysterectomy; excess risk persisted for more than 10 years, but…