RESUMO
Emergency obstetric hysterectomy is a procedure that potentially preserves the life and the postpartum bleeding is the direct cause of its indication, the hemorrhage postpartum happens in 1 of obstetric patients. This study was carried out to identify women with potential risk for this event and to prevent this obstetric problem. The most frequent indications for hysterectomy were identified, as well as the sociodemographic characteristic of the patients. The surgical procedure carried out was extra-fascial technique with type Richardson hysterectomy modified; the surgical pieces went to the pathology service, to obtain the histopathological diagnosis. 43 cases of obstetric hysterectomy, were analyzed; the characteristics of this group showed that bigger percentage of this event was more frequent in 31 to 35 years (39.5), with pregnancies at term (51.1) in third pregnancies(27.9), nulliparas (60.4), with first cesarean section (39.5), without previous abortions (79.0). The most frequent obstetric complications were uterine atony and placenta accreta. The cause for uterine atony could be interstitial edema, as well as myometrial hypertrophy, because such histopathological diagnoses were the most common. Odds ratio showed that a patient with cesarean section has 1.16 more probabilities of suffering hysterectomy than a woman with childbirth. This study describes the histological presence of interstitial edema and myometrial hypertrophy as possible causes of uterine atony in the histological study of surgical specimen. This could be related to no response of myometrial to the uterus-tonic effect of oxytocin. Obstetric uterine dysfunction has multifactorial cause. Patients with the characteristics described in this study should be considered as high risk.