Sliding Sign and Gel Sonovaginography: A Sneak Peek Prior to Laparoscopy in Patients with Endometriosis

CONTEXT: The rising incidence of endometriosis may be due to improvisation in the diagnostic techniques. Transvaginal sonography has proven to be very useful in the diagnosis of complexity of the disease and in turn to predict the intraoperative findings on laparoscopy. AIMS: The aim was to study the use of sliding sign for detecting the status of the pouch of Douglas (POD) and to check for the presence of bowel and nonbowel deep infiltrating endometriosis (DIE) by gel sonovaginography. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: This is a prospective observational study carried out patient division of Department of OBG in Kasturba Hospital Manipal. METHODS: The study was carried out over a period of 2 years and included 136 women. After written informed consent, a detailed history and clinical examination was done. A detailed transvaginal sonography was done for each of the patients by a single observer on the Philips HD11XE machine two-dimensional transvaginal probe which included gel sonovaginography and real-time dynamic test called sliding sign. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Chi-square test was used in this study. RESULTS: Sliding sign is highly specific, sensitive, and accurate for the detection of POD obliteration. It is 96.6% sensitive and 89.5% specific. It is 94.1% accurate and 94.5% positively predictive for the same. Transvaginal sonography is >92% specific for the detection of bowel and nonbowel DIE. The accuracy is over 91%. The negative predictability is 93.6% and 94.6%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Sliding sign is a useful, easy-to-perform, reproducible, and noninvasive modality for assessing the status of POD. Gel sonovaginography is also useful in accurately detecting the presence of deep infiltrating endometriotic deposits.