Although hysterectomy remains one of the most common forms of surgery to which women are likely to be exposed the psychological implications remain obscure. Psychological factors have been investigated both as independent and dependent variables but a variety of procedural and design shortcomings leave importance of such factors obscure. The more common faults include an undue emphasis on retrospective designs, inadequate controls, contamination of assessment procedures and failure to quantify and adequately analyse results. The present article concludes with an examination of those variables which ought to be considered by investigators planning research in this area.
RESUMEMeme si I'hysterectomie demeure I'une des formes de chirurgie les plus communes auxquelles les femmes sont exposees, on en conna'it encore peu les implications psychologiques. On a recherche ('importance des facteurs psychologiques aussi bien comme variables dependantes qu'independantes, mais cette importance demeure encore obscure a cause d'un ensemble d'insuffisances touchant aux techniques ou aux plans de recherches utilises. Parmi les defauts les plus frequents, on pent citer le recours abusif aux modeles retrospectifs, I'insuffisance des controles, la contamination des techniques devaluation, le defaut de quantification des resultats et I'insuffisance des analyses faites. L'article se termine par une etude des variables dont devraient tenir compte les chercheurs interesses a ce domaine.