Ultrasound-guided endometrial polypectomy could be a lower-cost, easily accessible alternative to hysteroscopy for women with abnormal uterine bleeding and polyps, researchers reported at the 2022 annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The prospective study of 30 patients who underwent the experimental procedure showed that clinicians were able to remove all the polyps they identified quickly and without sedation.
The technique is a "clever way to address endometrial polyps," said Lara Harvey, MD, MPH, a minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, who was not involved in the study.
"If you're a physician with access to in-office ultrasound and you're familiar with saline infusion sonohysterogram, then this might be a useful approach without a lot of added expense, but more research is needed to validate the technique," Harvey told Medscape Medical News.
The new technique was initially developed at the University of South Florida as an alternative to surgery for patients with medical comorbidities that placed them at an increased risk of complications with general anesthesia, according to Lauri Hochberg, MD, director of gynecologic imaging at USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, Tampa, Florida.
However, "we found that it was effective and well-tolerated in general and began offering it to all patients with endometrial polyps, even if they were healthy and at low risk for surgical complications," Hochberg told