Hysterectomy technique and risk of pelvic organ prolapse repair: a Danish nationwide cohort study

Purpose: The purpose was to investigate, in a large cohort, how hysterectomy technique influences the incidence of subsequent pelvic organ prolapse (POP) repair among women hysterectomized for benign conditions. Methods: From the Danish National Patient Registry, we collected data on all hysterectomies on benign indications, and all POP operations performed in Denmark from January 1, 1977 to June 10, 2016. We excluded patients with prior POP repair. We analyzed the incidence of POP surgery by cumulative incidence curves and hazard ratio (HR) for women with and without POP diagnoses or concomitant POP repair at hysterectomy. Results: In all, 178,282 women underwent hysterectomy in the study period and were included in the cohort. When examining the crude HR for the risk of POP repair after hysterectomy, vaginal hysterectomy (VH) had a threefold rise in HR compared to total abdominal hysterectomy (TAH). When restricting the analyses to women without POP at time of hysterectomy, the HR for VH decreased to 1.25. The same tendency was noticed when stratifying by compartment. In the subgroup of women without POP at hysterectomy, we found that supravaginal abdominal hysterectomy had a small increase in risk compared to TAH. Laparoscopic hysterectomy had the same risk of POP as TAH. Conclusions: Overall, we found only small differences in risk of POP repair between the different hysterectomy techniques after restricting the analyses to women without POP at hysterectomy.