Case patients were women who underwent planned concurrent procedures at a large tertiary care center from January 2004 to June 2017. Of these women, 77% had stress urinary incontinence, 74% had pelvic organ prolapse (with 55% having stage 3 or 4 prolapse), 71% had prolapse repair – most commonly a native-tissue transvaginal colpopexy – as part of their procedure, and 74% had an anti-incontinence procedure – most commonly a transobturator sling.
The most common final histologic diagnosis was benign disease (in 51% of patients), and uterine cancer was the most common malignancy encountered (36% of patients), Dr. Davidson said, noting that other diagnoses included ovarian and vulvar cancer, in 12% and 1% of cases, respectively.
Most surgeries were minimally invasive abdominal hysterectomies (56%), followed by laparotomies in 32%, minor vaginal surgeries in 6%, laparoscopy without hysterectomy in 5%, and vaginal hysterectomy in 1%.
Controls were matched 2:1 based on surgeon, surgery date and invasiveness (surgical route), and final pathological diagnosis.