Surgery, Women | featured news

Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29% more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.

It is 50 years since the first breast enlargement using silicone implants. Today it rates as the second-most popular form of cosmetic surgery worldwide, undergone by 1.5 million women in 2010.

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel began a two-day meeting Tuesday on silicone breast implants to consider ways to improve the effectiveness of post-approval safety studies.

Are wealthy women too posh to push? A new British study shows that upper-class women are more likely to get elective C-sections, raising new questions about who get the surgery -- and why.

Many women with early breast cancer do not appear to need removal of their lymph nodes, as is often recommended, according to a federally funded study released Tuesday.

Women who have gene mutations that increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer can substantially reduce their chances of developing -- and dying from -- those cancers if they have their breasts or ovaries removed preemptively, according to a new study.