If a woman has a total hysterectomy, the patient will not menstruate again after the surgery. The uterus is the organ that produces menstruation, and women menstruate mainly because the endometrium proliferates, secretes, and peels off and bleeds in response to cyclical fluctuations in ovarian hormones. If the patient’s uterus is removed, there will no longer be this cyclical change in the endometrium, so the patient will not experience menstruation. If the patient has not had a total hysterectomy, but a secondary hysterectomy that preserves the patient’s cervix and part of the body of the uterus, while preserving part of the endometrium. In this case, the patient will still have periods after the surgery. Because the patient still has functional endometrium, as long as the patient’s ovarian function is normal, this part of the surviving endometrium will also experience cyclic changes. So there will be exfoliative bleeding, but the amount of bleeding will usually be very small.