Does postoperative pain predict the outcome of endometrial ablation?

In this article, we hypothesized that significant pain in the immediate postoperative period is due to a deeper degree of thermal ablation, down to the myometrial layer, and consequently an increased likelihood of successful outcome.

We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 87 subjects who underwent thermal balloon endometrial ablation as the sole procedure under general anesthesia, administered by the same anesthetist using a standard protocol over a 10-year period from 2000 to 2010 at Thornbury Hospital, Sheffield, UK. All the cases were performed by the same surgeon in one hospital.

Twenty-eight (32.2%) subjects experienced severe or intractable pain within 1 h after the thermal balloon endometrial ablation procedure, while 26 (29.9%) subjects required morphine injection in the postoperative period. Overall, more than 70% of women experienced significant reduction in their menstrual flow. There was no difference in the clinical outcome between those who did or did not experience severe pain or between those who did or did not require morphine injection in the postoperative period.

The amount of postoperative pain did not predict the outcome of thermal balloon endometrial ablation.