Study Obtains Cancer Prevalence Data for Hysterectomies Involving Morcellation

​Among women who underwent minimally invasive hysterectomy using electric power morcellation, uterine cancers were present in 27 per 10,000 cases at the time of the procedure, reports a study published online July 22, 2014, in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Although there has been recent concern in the medical community that this procedure could result in the unintentional spread of cancer, the authors explain that electric power morcellation has been used in this capacity for almost two decades with few studies providing accurate estimates of the prevalence of unexpected pathology at the time of hysterectomy. For the study, the researchers used a large insurance database containing 500 hospitals to identify 232,882 women who underwent minimally invasive hysterectomy from 2006 to 2012.