3D Ultrasound Uterine Characteristics of Women Undergoing IVF/ICSI Treatment

INTRODUCTION

There has been a lot of increased interest in the recent years in the prevalence and diagnosis of congenital uterine anomalies (Chan et al 2011; Saravelos et al 2008). This has been further intensified by the introduction of several new classifications for these malformations, including the most recent ESHRE-ESGE classification (Grimbizis et al, 2013).

Most of the clinical interest, and what affects daily clinical practice is the diagnosis and treatment of the septate uterus, which is the commonest anomaly amenable to treatment (Homer and Li, 2000). Since the new ESHRE-ESGE classification, which has introduced a new objective method for diagnosis of this anomaly, by measuring the percentage of fundal indentation and considering to be a septate uterus when it is >50%.

To our knowledge there have been no prospective studies as yet assessing women undergoing ART in order to demonstrate whether indeed the 3D US morphological characteristics (including the percentage of fundal indentation) are correlated to either clinical pregnancy or clinical miscarriage. Indeed, this is of upmost importance, as for example the decision to operate on a so-called septate uterus should be based on whether it has a true impact on clinical outcomes. This is all the more most topical in the present era of IVF/ICSI, and the new classifications for uterine anomalies, as certain authors have criticized the new ESHRE-ESGE classification as significantly over-diagnosing the septate uterus which risks causing unnecessary interventions (Ludwin et al, 2015). Meanwhile other 3D US morphological characteristics such as characterisation of the subendometrial layers/junctional zone and Cesarean scan niches my also prove to be correlated with clinical outcomes.

AIMS Aim: To determine whether and to what extent different 3D US morphological characteristics of the uterus impact the clinical outcomes of women undergoing IVF/ICSI.