Evaluating the agreement of ultrasound imaging and beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (b-hCG)‎ measurement in confirming completed medical abortion :

Abstract EN

Objective: Clinical methods that are generally used to evaluate the completeness of medical abortion are not reliable.

Ultrasound imaging and beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (b-hCG) measurements are used to diagnose completed medical abortion, but a precise evaluation of these two methods has shown contradictory results.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the agreement of serum b-hCG measure- ment and ultrasound imaging to confirm complete medical abortion.

Materials and Methods: This study was conducted on pregnant women who had been referred to our center for medical abortion from 2015 to 2017.

All cases occurred in the first trimester of pregnancy.

They obtained one or two doses of vaginal misoprostol for medical abortion.

Success rate of medical abortion was measured by both transvaginal ultrasound imaging and consecutive serum b-hCG measurements two to four weeks after initial treatment.

Results: Among the 275 women who completed the study, complete medical abortion was confirmed by serum b-hCG in 231 women (84.3%) and transva- ginal ultrasound imaging in 195 women (70.8%) after two weeks.

All remaining cases completed the medical abortion after an additional two weeks, confirmed by both transvaginal ultrasound imaging and serum b- hCG.

The sensitivity, specificity, positive, and negative predictive values of b-hCG were 95.2%, 86.7%, 84%, and 70%, respectively; and these values for transvaginal ultrasound imaging were 68.5% Address for Correspondence: Marzieh Ghasemi2 * 1 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran 2 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pregnancy Health Research Center, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran 3 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Perinatology, Shohaday Tajrish Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Email: drghasemi@zaums.ac.ir; drghasemim@yahoo.com http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/QMJ.2021.22 Submitted: 05 April 2020 Accepted: 20 October 2020 a 2021 Peracheh, Teymouri, Noori, Arbabzadeh, Ghasemi, licensee HBKU Press.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cite this article as: Peracheh M, Teymouri B, Noori N, Arbabzadeh T, Ghasemi M.

Evaluating the agreement of ultrasound imaging and beta- human chorionic gonadotropin (b-hCG) measurement in confirming completed medical abortion: cross-sectional study, Qatar Medical Journal 2021:22 http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/ QMJ.2021.22 64.5%,77%, and 30.%, respectively, for the diagnosis of completed medical abortion.

Conclusion: Serum b-hCG measurement is as effective as transvaginal ultrasound imaging to confirm successful medical abortion in early pregnancy.