Hysterectomy – need of a paradigm shift

The first elective vaginal hysterectomy was performed in 1883 by C. Langerbeck. It took another 50 years for the first abdominal subtotal hysterectomy which was done by Charles Clay of Manchester. Ernst Wertheim performed the first radical hysterectomy for cervical cancer in 1898, the same year in which Marie Curie discovered Radium, the other modality of treatment for the same condition. In 1902 Schauta introduced the first vaginal radical hysterectomy. Until 1929 the subtotal hysterectomy was the standard procedure and in that year Richardson is credited with performing the first total abdominal hysterectomy. Yet another 60 years elapsed when Harry Reich developed laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy and subsequently refined it to total laparoscopic hysterectomy.