Centre for Reproductive Medicine, University Hospital Ghent, De Pintelaan 185 9000, Gent, Belgium.
Hum Reprod. 2010 Mar;25(3):562-8. doi: 10.1093/humrep/dep440. Epub 2009 Dec 15.
The need for serial vaginal sonographies to monitor ovarian stimulation for artificial reproductive technology (ART) treatments remains a major practical and organizational drawback both for patients and health-care providers. We explore the possibility of patients and/or their partners performing their own vaginal sonographies at home. To make this a reality, a portable, easy-to-use, home-applied vaginal probe for recording relevant images would have to be developed, as well as appropriate software to transfer images using modern communication technology to the centre, to analyse the recordings and to send a swift structured response, comprising dosing advice and next-step instructions. A simplification of the uncontested need to perform these sonographies, even if applicable to just a selected proportion of IVF patients, could fit in the general tendency to make IVF more patient centred and friendly, to implement telemedicine and to increase patient empowerment by supervised active participation to their treatment. The advantages of such a technology are explored in this paper, aiming at opening up a debate on whether patients themselves would, could and should achieve a further substantial simplification of ART without loss of quality while strongly curbing costs.
对接受人工生殖技术 (ART) 治疗的患者和医疗服务提供者来说，为了监测卵巢刺激情况而需要多次进行阴道超声检查，这在实践和组织方面仍是一个主要的难题。我们探讨了患者及其伴侣是否有可能在家中自行进行阴道超声检查。要实现这一目标，需要开发一种便携式、易于使用、可在家中应用的阴道探头，用于记录相关图像，以及适当的软件，以便使用现代通信技术将图像传输到中心，对记录进行分析，并快速发送包含剂量建议和下一步指示的结构化回复。如果这种简化阴道超声检查的方法不仅适用于少数 IVF 患者，而且还适用于他们，那么这种方法将符合使 IVF 更以患者为中心和更友好、实施远程医疗以及通过监督患者积极参与治疗来增强患者能力的总体趋势。本文探讨了这项技术的优势，旨在就患者是否以及如何能够在不降低质量的情况下通过自我管理实现 ART 的进一步简化以降低成本展开讨论。
