Kimberly Kim

By Kimberly H. Kim

Hysterectomy affects several aspects of a woman’s health, and persons considering a surgery should be aware of its effectiveness for relief of symptoms and long term effects on quality of life. The aims of the study were to examine pain, depressed mood, and sleep disturbance symptoms of women before and six weeks after hysterectomy; compare the physiological and social variables related to the symptoms, and examine the levels of symptom severity between abdominal vs vaginal hysterectomy. A pre and post measures study collected data from a prospective sample of 26 of the 36 culturally diverse women who were scheduled for hysterectomy using subjective questionnaires and objective wrist actigraphy monitoring for sleep and wake time. Results indicated that the majority of participants reported moderate amounts of pain before surgery however an average pain score did not vary over time. Depressed mood scores in women with laparoscopic vaginal hysterectomy significantly decreased from the baseline to six weeks after surgery, showing less severity of depression after surgery. Compared to the baseline measures, wrist actigraphy recordings showed increases in the numbers of awakening, wake after sleep onset and day time sleep during six weeks after surgery indicating that women had more sleep disturbance postoperatively. However, compared to women who had the abdominal surgery, those with vaginal hysterectomy reported a significantly severe sleep disturbance at six weeks after surgery; and younger women experienced more wake time at night. Evidence based findings indicated that hysterectomy relieved pain however women continued to experience disturbed sleep patterns six weeks after surgery, suggesting further research is needed in light of women’s health.

Part of the book: Approaches to Hysterectomy