Measuring the thickness--is that all we have to do for sonographic assessment of endometrium in postmenopausal women?

For sonographic assessment of the endometrium in postmenopausal women, measurement of the maximum thickness is used in many cases as the sole criterion. The cut-off values stated in the literature, however, vary considerably. This prospective study examined 200 female patients in order to ascertain the value of echomorphology in addition to endometrial biometry. Up to an overall endometrial thickness of 3 mm, we observed only histologies without any pathological findings, whereas from an endometrial thickness of 10 mm upwards, only polyps, hyperplasias and carcinomas were found. In more than a third of our patients, the endometrial thickness was between 3 and 10 mm where the structure of the endometrium could reflect the possible histological finding: homogeneity, low echo and a sonographically depictable central echo between symmetrical endometrial leaves were an indication for absence of pathological findings, whereas heterogeneity and high echogenicity were pointers for pathological changes. In contrast to the sole measurement of endometrial thickness in the postmenopause, the combined metric and morphological parameters improve not only the predictability of pathological findings but, above all, the selectivity of the vaginosonographic assessment of the endometrium in postmenopausal women.