Risk of Undetected Cancer at the Time of Laparoscopic Supracervical Hysterectomy and Laparoscopic Myomectomy: Implications for the Use of Power Morcellation

Abstract Background Power morcellation during gynecological procedures may cause seeding of undiagnosed cancers. We used a national database to determine the prevalence of malignant and premalignant conditions that were present but undetected at the time of laparoscopic supracervical hysterectomy and laparoscopic myomectomy, surgeries in which morcellation is commonly used. Methods Data from 2007 to 2012 were obtained from MarketScan, an administrative database of diagnostic and treatment data for 55.7 million commercially insured women in the United States. Because power morcellation is not captured with billing codes, we limited our analysis to women undergoing procedures that typically use morcellation and that are contraindicated in the case of suspected malignancy to describe the rates at which undetected cancers occur, thus potentially putting patients at risk for seeding of malignant tissue. We defined the rate of preoperative endometrial biopsy and postoperative cancers and hyperplasia by manually reviewing inpatient and outpatient International Classification of Disease, 9th edition, and Current Procedural Terminology codes for all suspected cases. Results In all, 17,903 women underwent laparoscopic supracervical hysterectomy and 1,603 underwent laparoscopic myomectomy. The rate of uterine cancer among women undergoing hysterectomy was 2.96 per 1000 and increased with age from 0 per 1,000 at age younger than 35 to 9.07 per 1,000 at ages 55 to 64 ( p