Submucous myomas: a new presurgical classification to evaluate the viability of hysteroscopic surgical treatment--preliminary report.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To develop a new preoperative classification of submucous myomas for evaluating the viability and the degree of difficulty of hysteroscopic myomectomy.

DESIGN: Retrospective study (Canadian Task Force classification II-3)

SETTING: University teaching hospitals.

PATIENTS: Fifty-five patients who underwent hysteroscopic resection of submucous myomas.

INTERVENTION: The possibility of total resection of the myoma, the operating time, the fluid deficit, and the frequency of any complications were considered. The myomas were classified according to the Classification of the European Society for Gynaecological Endoscopy (ESGE) and by our group's new classification (NC), which considers not only the degree of penetration of the myoma into the myometrium, but also adds in such parameters as the distance of the base of the myoma from the uterine wall, the size of the nodule (cm), and the topography of the uterine cavity. The Fisher's exact test, the Student's t test, and the analysis of variance test were used in the statistical analysis. A p value less than .05 in the two-tailed test was considered significant.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: In 57 myomas, hysteroscopic surgery was considered complete. There was no significant difference among the three ESGE levels (0, 1, and 2). Using the NC, the difference between the numbers of complete surgeries was significant (p <.001) for the two levels (groups I and II). The difference between the operating times was significant for the two classifications. With respect to the fluid deficit, only the NC showed significant differences between the levels (p = .02).

CONCLUSIONS: We believe that the NC gives more clues as to the difficulties of a hysteroscopic myomectomy than the standard ESGE classification. It should be stressed that the number of hysteroscopic myomectomies used in this analysis was low, and it would be interesting to evaluate the performance of the classification in a larger number of patients.