What is the difference between transvaginal and transabdominal ultrasound?

Ultrasonography is one of the important auxiliary examinations for gynecological physical examination and disease diagnosis, and the commonly used examination methods are transabdominal ultrasonography and transvaginal ultrasonography. Transabdominal ultrasonography is the most basic way of gynecological ultrasonography, with a wide range of adaptability, but it is easily interfered by obesity, abdominal wall surgical scars, and abdominal gas, which makes the image display unclear and leads to missed diagnosis or misdiagnosis. Transabdominal ultrasonography requires the patient to drink a lot of water before the examination and fill up the bladder moderately, and the degree of bladder filling varies greatly among individuals, and there are cases in which a small amount of urination is required due to overfilling of the bladder, or the bladder is not filled well and the patient needs to continue to hold in urine in order to complete the examination, and sometimes it is even necessary to repeat the examination for several times, which prolongs the time of medical consultation. Compared with transabdominal ultrasonography, transvaginal ultrasonography does not need to hold urine, and the examination is performed after urination before the examination. Due to the high resolution of the probe and the close distance between the probing site and the probe, it avoids the interference of intestinal gases and the attenuation of the abdominal fat, so that the internal structure of the examined organs and lesions can be more clearly and intuitively displayed, and it can obtain more diagnostic information than transabdominal ultrasonography. Although transvaginal ultrasound in gynecological ultrasound examination has the above advantages, but also has some limitations: 1, for unmarried women, menstruation, severe vaginal inflammation should not be used; 2, for the diameter of the uterine fibroids and pelvic masses greater than six centimeters can not be completely show the scope of the lesion, then need to be combined with the transabdominal ultrasound examination. In the process of clinical diagnosis and treatment, when encountering difficult and complicated diseases, doctors will also use the combined method of transvaginal and transabdominal ultrasonography according to the specific conditions of the examinee.