Importance of some diagnostic aids in the acute pelvic inflammatory disease

摘要

INTRODUCTION. At present, the acute pelvic inflammatory disease is considered a syndrome clinically attributed to the ascending passage of microorganisms from the vagina to the cervix, the endometrium and the Fallopian's tubes. It is also capable of disseminating to the neighbouring structures. The objective of this paper was to know the behaviour of the disease, the efficiency of some diagnostic aids and procedures, the performance of the haematological tests, and to identify the most common germs to define the further conduct. METHODS. The study group consisted of 108 females seen at "Julio Trigo López" Hospital due to an acute inflammatory pelvic disease. The sample was selected at random and variables such as general and health data and data from the gynecoobstetric history were registered. Vaginal manipulation, with anaesthesia or without it, puncture of Douglas' pouch, ultrasound, laparoscopy, red-blood cell count, white-blood cell count, and erythrosedimentation were used to make the diagnosis. Laparoscopy was used in all cases as a confirmatory test. RESULTS. Most of the patients were aged 20-25. Abdominal pain (98.1 %) and leucorrhoea (30.6 %) predominated as clinical symptomatology. A high incidence of this disease was observed in females at reproductive age, with 2 or more pregnancies and abortions and history of implanted intrauterine device. Moreover, there was a diagnostic concordance between the results of the vaginal manipulation and ultrasound, on comparing them with laparoscopy. The least specific test was vaginal manipulation (20.5 %) and the predictive values of the lowest positive test were obtained with the same procedure (64.6 %), as well as with erythrosedimentation (70 %). Therefore, ultrasound proved to be the most effective diagnostic aid (87,5 %) after laparoscopy. CONCLUSIONS. It was concluded that ultrasound (77 %) is the most effective test compared with laparoscopy, followed by vaginal manipulation (70 %).