A Comparison of Vascular Pulsatility and Resistive Indices in Gynecological Tumor Detection Using Transvaginal Ultrasound

Transvaginal Doppler ultrasound was applied to 85 patients to determine whether pelvic malignancy could be predicted by pulsatility (PI) and resistive indices (RI) of intratu-moral, ovarian, and uterine vessels. Thirty-five of the patients in the study were confirmed to have malignant tumors of the cervix, uterus, or ovary. The mean intratu-moral PI and RI from malignant tumors were 0.81 (SD 0.24; range 0.3-1.2) and 0.54 (SD 0.10; range 0.27-0.62), respectively. They were significantly lower than those of the benign group (both with P < 0.05, Student's t test). Thresholds of intratumoral PI < 1.0 and RI < 0.6, which differentiate malignant from benign tumors, were determined by using two receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. These gave a sensitivity of 94