Dear Dr. Wendy, Your advice and experience are treasures. Please help me to advise a seventy year old client, at normal weight, who is on no medications, and has a 3/4 (4 being the worst) severity bladder prolapse. The client would like to have a surgical repair. Her uterus and ovaries are not diseased and there is no family history of female organ cancers. The urogynecologist suggests removing the uterus and ovaries during the bladder prolapse repair "to prevent future disease." Are the female organs more than place holders after menopause? Will the body "miss" these organs, if the adrenals are intact and functioning? Thank you for any advice and suggestions. From, Rhonda Kurtis

Wendy said: Most gynecologic surgeons, myself included, would recommend removing the uterus and ovaries if she needs a large pelvic floor correction, with correction of bladder and rectal prolapse. I've done these procedures with and without removing the organs....and there is a bit higher failure rate of the bladder prolapse if the uterus is still present. Typically, since the bladder is attached to the front wall of the uterus, if the bladder is low then the supporting structures of the uterus have stretched out and the uterus is low as well. Can you "tack it up" when you repair the dropped bladder? Yes. Does that sometimes snap and then the weight of the lower uterus pull the bladder back down? Yes, pretty common. When the uterus is removed at the same time, then only the vaginal cuff needs to be tacked up, and the chance of that falling is much less. As for the ovaries....less important, as ovarian cancer is pretty rare. Take them or leave them, it doesn't much matter. Energetically, removing these organs doesn't change things. The body doesn't "miss them", and the meridians involved aren't altered by the loss of the physical organ.

Thank you very much for this information! It is appreciated and will be passed along to the client to help inform her surgical choices. --Rhonda K.