What is hysteroscopy?

       The introduction of hysteroscopy, a type of endoscopy, has advanced the traditional open and invasive treatment to the era of non-open and less invasive endoscopic treatment and is a successful example of minimally invasive surgery.  It has been more than 100 years since Panlaleoni first reported the use of a primitive hysteroscope to examine a 60-year-old woman with postmenopausal vaginal bleeding and found a polyp-like growth at the base of the uterus, but it is only in the last 10 years or so that hysteroscopy has been able to develop rapidly.  Continuous improvements in hysteroscopic instruments have reduced its outer sheath from 5 mm to 3.5 mm and even to 2.5 mm, greatly reducing the pain of dilating the cervical opening and making it easily tolerated by patients, allowing its inclusion in routine outpatient examinations.  The high-resolution images can reveal not only gross lesions in the uterus, such as polyps, myomas, malformations, adhesions, and foreign bodies, but also minor tissue variants, such as limited endometrial thickening, vascular malformations, and adhesions at the opening of the fallopian tubes.  With the continuous development of hysteroscopic instruments and the use of energy sources such as cold light, electricity and laser, the clinical application of hysteroscopy has evolved from simply diagnosing intrauterine diseases to being able to perform all types of intrauterine treatments and surgeries.  This technique is mainly used for the diagnosis of uterine etiology of abnormal uterine bleeding and infertility; it is also suitable for the verification and exclusion of ultrasound, HSG, diagnostic curettage, MRI, etc. suggesting suspicious abnormalities; it is an important adjunct in the diagnosis and treatment of gynecological endocrine diseases.  In recent years, good results have been achieved in the treatment of tubal blockage by hysteroscopic intubation and lavage, and the cure rate has been reported to be more than 80%, providing another good and effective treatment method for patients with tubal infertility.