CMA Infobase: Clinical Practice Guidelines Database
Posted by: admin on: April 20, 2011
Objective is to formulate clinical recommendations for the assessment of endometrial thickening when it is found on ultrasound in a postmenopausal patient without bleeding.
Recommendations
- Transvaginal ultrasound should not be used as screening for endometrial cancer.
- Endometrial sampling in a postmenopausal woman without bleeding should not be routinely performed.
- Indications for tissue sampling of the endometrium in bleeding postmenopausal women with an endometrial
- thickness of greater than 4 to 5 mm should not be extrapolated to asymptomatic women.
- A woman who has endometrial thickening and other positive findings on ultrasound, such as increased vascularity, inhomogeneity of endometrium, particulate fluid, or thickened endometrium over 11 mm, should be referred to a gynaecologist for further investigations.
- Decisions about further investigations should be made on a case-by-case basis in asymptomatic women with increased endometrial thickening and risk factors for endometrial cancer such as obesity, hypertension and late menopause.
- In asymptomatic women on tamoxifen, a routine ultrasound for endometrial thickening should not be performed.
- Not all postmenopausal women who have asymptomatic endometrial polyps require surgery.
- Women found to have asymptomatic polyps on ultrasound should be triaged for intervention according to size of the polyp, age, and other risk factors.
- · Ensure that women with asymptomatic thickening and endometrial polyps found on ultrasound are managed appropriately.
- Adoption of these recommendations would save postmenopausal women unnecessary anxiety, pain and risk of procedural complication.
- It is also expected to decrease the cost to the health system by eliminating unnecessary interventions.
http://www.cma.ca/index.php?ci_id=54490&la_id=1&cpgId=11141
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