DIAGNOSTIC HYSTEROSCOPY IN ABNORMAL UTERINE BLEEDING & IT'S HISTOPATHOLOGIC CORRELATION: OUR EXPERIENCE

Aims & objectives: 1) To study the accuracy of hysteroscopy in evaluation of abnormal uterine bleeding in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women. 2) To correlate hysteroscopic findings with histopathologic results. Materials and methods: It is a retrospective study done in the department of OBG at K.S.Hegde Medical Academy, Mangalore. All patients who underwent diagnostic hysteroscopy for abnormal uterine bleeding in the past 6 years were included in this study. Patients underwent clinical and sonographical evaluation. Following hysteroscopic evaluation, patients had undergone dilatation and curettage and endometrial curetting were sent for histopathological examination (HPE). The correlation between findings on hysteroscopy & HPE were tabulated. Results: On hysteroscopy, endometrium was classified as suggestive of normal, hyperplasia, atrophic, polyp, fibroid, cancer. Histopathological diagnosis was taken as gold standard to determine the efficacy of hysteroscopy in diagnosing endometrial pathologies. Out of 175 patients, 108 patients were diagnosed to have endometrial hyperplasia on hysteroscopy, however only 53 confirmed to have on histopathologically. Similarly 25 patients were said to have normal findings on hysteroscopy but by histopathology 85 were having normal endometrium. Hysteroscopy was highly specific for diagnosis of polyp (95.9%), cancer (100.0%), and atrophy (96. 9%), normal endometrium (92.2%) but low specificity for diagnosing hyperplasia (48.4%). The sensitivity of hysteroscopy in diagnosing polyp and endometrial hyperplasia were 100% and 84.9% respectively but it was low in case of cancer (16.7%) and normal endometrium (21.2%). Conclusion: Hysteroscopy is a highly accurate diagnostic tool in diagnosing intrauterine lesions like endometrial polyp and submucous fibroid. In fact, it was also found to be highly specific in conditions like endometrial cancer, polyp, atrophic and normal endometrium.