(epharmanews) – Appendectomy, one of the most common medical operations and it is done to remove the appendix, does not affect a woman’s fertility, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Dundee, UK.
The results showed that women who had their appendixes removed were not only saved from death due to the life threatening appendicitis, but also were more likely to get pregnant later on than women who had not had the common surgery.
Appendicitis, ruptured appendixes and severe pelvic infections after appendectomies have always been thought to reduce fertility in women. Some reports said that the surgery trauma can have a bad effect on fertility possibly because it could leave scar tissue sticking to the fallopian tubes and obstruct an egg on its way to the uterus.
"A lot of patients think they may become infertile after appendicectomy," said Mr. Sami Shimi, a surgeon from the University of Dundee, who worked on the new study. "But when I looked at the reports supporting this, they were really weak."
Shimi and his colleagues utilized one of the world's largest digital repositories of medical records from primary care, the General Practice Research Database in the UK to do a bigger study.
They found, as published in Fertility and Sterility, that out of more than 76,000 women who had an appendectomy, 39 percent got pregnant in the first decade after the surgery, while only 28 percent of nearly 152000 women who had not had the surgery got pregnant. Although the follow-up time was slightly shorter for this group, the fertility gap remained after accounting for age, birth control use, number of previous hospitalizations and other factors.
These results show that women who need to have their appendix removed should not worry about fertility problems. However, the researchers do not endorse that women should undergo the surgery to increase chances of fertility, Shimi concluded.
