Transvaginal uterine ultrasonography compared with endometrial biopsy for the detection of endometrial disease in perimenopausal women with uterine bleeding.
BACKGROUND
Almost 70% of all gynecological consultations in perimenopausal women are related to irregular uterine bleeding. In this prospective study, we compared endometrial assessment by transvaginal ultrasonography (TVS) in perimenopausal women with irregular uterine bleeding to histological assessment and tested whether the TVS was effective as a diagnostic tool for the detection of endometrial pathology in these women.


METHODS
Eighty consecutive perimenopausal women complaining of irregular uterine bleeding participated in the study. The women were evaluated by transvaginal scans, performed immediately before endometrial biopsy. The ultrasonographic results were compared with the histological diagnosis obtained from the endometrial biopsy.


RESULTS
Sixty-seven out of 80 women (83.7%) had normal histological findings, whereas 13 (16.3%) had abnormal findings. No endometrial cancer was diagnosed in this cohort of women. In the 67 women with a histological diagnosis of normal endometrium, mean+/-SD endometrial thickness was 10.5+/-4.0 mm (range 4.0-18.5 mm), whereas the corresponding value in the 13 women with abnormal findings was 18.7+/-3.8 mm (range 13.5-22.5 mm). If a 13 mm cut-off limit was used for endometrial thickness, which would include all abnormal cases, the sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive values were 100%, 71.64% and 40.62%, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
TVS can identify women with perimenopausal bleeding in which the likelihood of endometrial pathology is high and in which tissue sampling should be performed. Thus, TVS can be a primary method of selecting women with perimenopausal bleeding who must be further investigated with more invasive methods such as endometrial biopsy.
Paraskevaidis
E
E
Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Ioannina University Hospital, Greece. vangelispar@hotmail.com
Kalantaridou
S N
SN
Papadimitriou
D
D
Pappa
L
L
Malamou-Mitsi
V
V
Zikopoulos
K
K
Kazantzis
E
E
Lolis
E D
ED
Agnantis
N J
NJ
D000328:Adult; D001706:Biopsy; D004717:Endometrium / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008593:Menopause; D008875:Middle Aged; D011446:Prospective Studies; D014463:Ultrasonography; D014592:Uterine Hemorrhage / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology*