LEEP Surgery of the Cervix and Future Fertility

1. If you have had children, you may not be as worried about the condition of your cervix after surgery, but if you have not had children yet, it may be important to get more information.

2. Precancerous changes of the cervix may be able to be reversed by the body’s own immune system if very early, but once they get more advanced they can only be treated by surgical removal of the abnormal tissue.

3. Cervical cancer and cervical pre-cancer are caused by the HPV virus and it is still very common for young, un-vaccinated, women to have these changes. And it is true that these are the women who want future pregnancies.

4. It is also true that the LEEP or other kind of conization procedure removes some of the cervical tissue making preterm labor, preterm labor, and miscarriage more of a risk for women who get these procedures.

5. It is really not that common to have a problem with pregnancy after surgery is done. Not everyone has adverse outcome from the treatments, and many women have very healthy pregnancies after their cervical dysplasia (precancer) treatment. All gynecologists have told their patients that the cervix does indeed heal after these procedures, and physician researchers at Samsung Medical center Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology have looked into just how much the cervix regenerates. Their findings were that 6 months after conization about 90% of the cervix has regenerated. They now want to study whether exact amount regenerated correlates with the effects on later pregnancies, and also how the tissue has changed (is the amount of collagen different), as well as just how this part of our body can indeed grow back!