Red Bank, NJ - Although more than half of the country's
women will have some type of pelvic surgery and are therefore at risk for
surgical adhesions, a survey released this month by the not-for-profit National
Women's Health Resource Center (NWHRC) finds that women are largely unaware of
the health risks associated with adhesions.
Surgical adhesions occur when tissue in the abdominal cavity adheres, or gets
stuck to other tissue. Adhesions commonly form following pelvic surgeries, such
as hysterectomy, tubal ligation, cesarean section, and cyst removal. Left
untreated, adhesions can cause infertility, abdominal pain, and bowel
obstruction.
The survey of 1,000 women showed respondents strongly believe women should be
informed about surgical adhesions prior to surgery (69%). Conversely, an
overwhelming majority of women (80%) who had pelvic surgery were not informed
about adhesions prior to their surgery. Of the women in the survey who suffer
from adhesions, seven out of ten (70%) say they would have taken special
precautions to protect themselves from getting adhesions if they had been aware
of possible adhesion-related complications.
Susan Jones*, a human resources director and mother of three from McLean,
Virginia, has experience with the long-term effects adhesions can have on a
person's health. All of Jones's children were delivered by cesarean section. Due
to adhesions caused by these three surgeries, she suffers from reoccurring
abdominal pain and has been advised not to have any more children because of the
increased difficulty of delivering a baby surrounded by such a large amount of
scar tissue.
"My first c-section only took about 10 minutes for the doctor to get the baby
out," said Jones. "My second c-section took nearly 45 minutes and my final
c-section took nearly an hour and a half. My doctor had such a hard time
maneuvering around the scar tissue to get to my baby."
"If I had known about adhesions," continued Jones, "I would have talked to my
doctor about what can be done to reduce my risk for getting them."
Like Ms. Jones, half (51%) of survey respondents were not aware that
preventative measures can be taken to lower your risk of adhesions and an even
higher proportion (68%) of women that had undergone surgery did not know if
their surgeon took specific steps to guard against adhesions.
"Preventive measures to reduce the incidence of adhesions are the mainstay of
limiting the complications related to adhesions," stated Dr. Glenn Schattman,
Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Weill Medical College of
Cornell University. "These include using minimally invasive surgical procedures,
meticulous surgical technique, keeping tissues moist, reducing bleeding and the
use of adjuvant adhesions prevention barriers to keep the tissues from sticking
to each other."
"It's important to understand that once adhesions form, they are hard to get
rid of," continued Dr. Schattman. "Adhesions can cause blockages of the
intestines, fallopian tubes causing infertility and pain."
When faced with pelvic surgery, women said they were most concerned about
short-term surgical issues such as the general recovery process (60%), immediate
surgical results (59%) and post surgical pain (59%).
"Along with their immediate post-surgery concerns, women need to make
adhesions part of the pre-surgery dialogue with their health care provider,"
stated Elizabeth Battaglino Cahill, RN, executive vice president of the NWHRC.
"We hope that this adhesion awareness campaign can give women the tools they
need to understand the health risks of adhesions and how to protect themselves
from this life-long internal scarring."
To provide women the information they need about ways to minimize the risk of
surgical adhesions, the NWHRC has developed a one-page fast facts on adhesions
and an in-depth Guide to Preparing for Gynecologic Surgery. The guide
includes sections entitled:
- All About Adhesions
- Preparing for Surgery Checklist
- Choosing a Surgeon
- After Your Surgery
To download your complimentary online copy of the Guide to Preparing for
Gynecologic Surgery, "Fast Facts for Your Health: Pelvic Adhesions" or to
learn more about the adhesion survey, please visit NWHRC's award-winning Web
site, www.healthywomen.org. The survey and
campaign materials were made possible through support from Ethicon Women's
Health & Urology, a division of ETHICON, Inc.