In 1901 a patient had bilateral ovariotomy performed; five years later
she complained of severe uterine hæmorrhage. I removed the uterus by the
abdominal route (total hysterectomy). The corporeal endometrium was
cancerous throughout. The patient survived the operation six months.
Similar cases have been recorded by Martin, Butler-Smythe, and
Playfair.
=Adenomyoma of the Uterus.= This disease has not received adequate
recognition at the hands of British surgeons, yet it is a condition
which occasionally causes much doubt in the surgeon’s mind in the course
of hysterectomy. This adenomyomatous change affects the endometrium and
is, in some cases, associated with interstitial and subserous fibroids:
it causes often great enlargement of the uterus, and under these
conditions the fundus can be felt high in the hypogastrium. The patients
are often profoundly anæmic as the result of long-continued menorrhagia.
The physical and clinical signs of the disease are those present in
patients with a large degenerating submucous fibroid. Indeed the surgeon
often removes the uterus under this impression, and, after the operation
is completed, when he divides the uterus expecting to see the usual
encapsuled tumour, to his surprise finds a uterus with greatly thickened
walls (Fig. 16).
Microscopically the adventitious material is made of irregular tracts of
endometrium containing glands and strands of unstriped muscle tissue.
It is important for the surgeon to recognize these cases because,
contrary to the rule with simple uterine fibroids, these adenomyomatous
uteri are often adherent to the adjacent bowel and to the bladder: in
connexion with this fact several observers have pointed out that uteri
affected with this disease are often associated with inflammatory
affections of the Fallopian tubes, and there are good reasons for the
belief that the adenomyomatous change has a microbic origin. In this
connexion it is worth mention that adenomyomatous uteri are sometimes
tuberculous (Fig. 17). Some examples of this disease have been mistaken
for cancer of ‘the body of the uterus’.
In this disease subtotal hysterectomy gives admirable results, immediate
and remote.
THE FATE AND VALUE OF BELATED OVARIES
The only improvement of any importance made in Baer’s operation of
subtotal hysterectomy concerns the ovaries. These Baer removed with the
Fallopian tubes, but in 1897 I advocated, at the Obstetrical Society,
London, that they were of great value to the patient, and pointed out
that their conservation, when healthy, spared the patient the annoyance
of that curious vaso-motor phenomenon, known to women as ‘flushings’,
which is the only obtrusive sign of the menopause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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