Vaginal ultrasound-guided ovarian needle puncture compared to laparoscopic ovarian drilling in women with polycystic ovary syndrome.

Study Objective: To compare pregnancy outcomes in PCOS women undergoing transvaginal ovarian injury (TVOI) and laparoscopic ovarian drilling (LOD) DESIGN: 126 infertile patients with PCOS were included in this prospective cohort study CANADIAN TASK FORCE CLASSIFICATION OF LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: IIA.

Setting: University-affiliated fertility center.

Patients: Sixty-seven infertile patients with the history of failed in vitro maturation underwent follow-up as the TVOI group. Fifty-nine infertile women who underwent LOD acted as controls. All subjects had PCOS with menstrual irregularity and were anovulatory by repetitive serum progesterone levels.

Interventions: The LOD group underwent six cauterizations of a single ovary with 30W for 4-6 s. Failed IVM subjects with 20-30 needle punctures per ovary acted as the TVOI group. Subjects were followed for six months.

Measurements And Main Results: There was not a significant difference between the groups when the cases were evaluated in terms of spontaneous pregnancy or miscarriage rates. BMI levels decreased in both the TVOI and the LOD groups in a similar fashion. However, serum AMH and AFC decreased greater after LOD than they did with TVOI over the six-month duration of the study (p < 0.001 in both cases).

Conclusions: Preliminary data suggest that TVOI likely represents a safer, less costly and equally effective manner of surgical ovulation induction in anovulatory PCOS women when compared to LOD.