Preoperative diagnosis of pelvic actinomycosis by clinical cytology.
BACKGROUND
The purpose of this work was to investigate whether clinical cytology could be useful in the preoperative diagnosis of pelvic actinomycosis.


METHODS
This study involved the prospective collection of samples derived from the endometrium and the uterine cervix, and retrospective data analysis. Nine patients with clinically diagnosed pelvic actinomycosis were enrolled. The clinical and hematological characteristics of patients were recorded, and detection of actinomyces was performed by cytology, pathology, and bacteriological culture of samples and by imprint intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) cytology.


RESULTS
The detection rate of actinomyces was 77.7% by combined cervical and endometrial cytology, 50.0% by pathology, and 11.1% by bacterial culture.


CONCLUSIONS
The higher detection rate of actinomyces by cytology than by pathology or bacteriology suggests that careful cytological examination may be clinically useful in the preoperative diagnosis of pelvic actinomycosis.
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Nagasaki University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Nagasaki, Japan.
Katsuya
K
Matsuda
Hisayoshi
H
Nakajima
Khaleque N
KN
Khan
Terumi
T
Tanigawa
Daisuke
D
Hamaguchi
Michio
M
Kitajima
Koichi
K
Hiraki
Shingo
S
Moriyama
Hideaki
H
Masuzaki