Role of various screening techniques in detecting preinvasive lesions of the cervix among symptomatic women and women having unhealthy cervix.

INTRODUCTION: Cervical cancer which is preventable, occurs due to humanpapiloma virus infection and results in a preinvasive condition called cervical intraepithelial neoplasm (CIN) before the development of cancer. Majority of the patients with CIN or early stage of cervical cancer present with symptoms such as abnormal vaginal discharge or bleeding, and unhealthy looking cervix. Selectively screening these symptomatic patients, can detect more number of positive cases and also most effective screening technique for these selective patients can be advocated. MATERIALS AND METHODS: All married women between 21 and 65 years attending gynecology outpatient department of a tertiary care health center in Central India and having unhealthy cervix or abnormal vaginal discharge were included. All women were subjected to Pap smear, visual inspection under acetic acid (VIA), visual inspection under Lugol's iodine (VILI) and colposcopy. Biopsy was taken in all cases. Diagnostic value of each screening method was determined in terms of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value. RESULTS: Out of 352 patients, around 20% of them were found to have abnormal cytology. The sensitivity and specificity of Pap smear was found to be 34% and 94%. But colposcopy has high sensitivity and low specificity, i.e., 99% and 31%, respectively. On the other hand the sensitivity and specificity of VIA and VILI are comparable i.e., 65% and 45% and 64% and 48% respectively. Pap smear shows high positive predictive value among all, i.e., 85% and colposcopy shows 58% for the same. CONCLUSION: Pap smear carries low sensitivity but high positive predictive value. As compared to Pap smear, VIA and VILI are more sensitive and are of low cost. Colposcopy can be considered as a preferred method of screening due to its extremely high sensitivity.

Role of Saline Infusion Sonohysterography in Infertility Evaluation.

INTRODUCTION: Etiology of infertility is multifactorial, and fallopian tube abnormality being one of the most important causes accounts for up to 40% of female subfertility if not less and is further increasing. Saline infusion sonohysterography (SIS) procedure is gaining popularity and is being widely practiced and accepted as a screening tool in assessing tubal patency in infertile patients attending infertility clinic and has become popular as a routine test for the evaluation of the uterine cavity in the investigation of infertility and abnormal uterine bleeding. OBJECTIVE: To compare the results of SIS with that of hysterosalpingography in infertility evaluation and to observe the role of SIS to find out endometrial pathology and tubal patency in infertility patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A retrospective, observational study was done on the basis of record maintained in the ultrasound register and case record sheets of all infertile women who underwent infertility treatment and fulfilled the inclusion criteria from June 2015 to August 2016. RESULTS: SIS had sensitivity of 91%, specificity of 76% positive predictive value (PPV) of 95%, negative predictive value (NPV) of 66%, and accuracy of 89% of SIS in evaluating tubal patency. Further, SIS showed sensitivity of 83.3%, specificity of 60%, PPV of 75%, NPV of 75%, and accuracy of 72% in detecting pelvic pathology. CONCLUSION: In a low-resource country like India where patients are also less educated, SIS can prove to be a useful tool in initial workup of infertility patients with better compliance, low cost, and better results in a single visit.