The risk of diagnostic hysteroscopy in women with endometrial cancer.

Abstract

We sought to evaluate whether hysteroscopy in patients with endometrial cancer had an effect on disease stage or mortality. This was a retrospective cohort analysis of data linked between a registry of women diagnosed with endometrial cancer and physician billing data on hysteroscopy. A 99.8% match rate was obtained. Eighty-five percent of cases had complete data on staging. Of these 1972 cases, 672 (34.1%) had undergone hysteroscopy. There was no difference in stage III disease between the hysteroscopy (7.1%) vs no hysteroscopy (6.5%) group (P = .38). There was also no difference in death rates, 13.2% vs 15.2% (P = .25), or in the proportion of women dying of female genital organ cancer, 46.1% vs 42.1% (P = .53), respectively. Hysteroscopy is not associated with a higher rate of stage III disease or mortality. It allows for accurate diagnosis with direct visualization and biopsy, and should be considered a safe diagnostic tool.