Sterilisations in girls and young women: Is it still happening?

Abstract

Objective: To determine whether sterilising procedures - hysterectomies, endometrial ablations or tubal ligations - are being performed in minors for non-therapeutic reasons, without Family Law Court approval. Methods: Victorian Admitted Episode Dataset 1996-99 was used to identify all young women <18 who had a sterilising procedure. Associated codes for indications and pathology were reviewed to exclude malignancies, congenital anomalies, potential miscoding and misleading codes associated with endometriosis. Results: Although 40 procedures were identified from the dataset, the majority of these can be excluded after review of the associated codes. In two cases sterilising procedures were p..