The value of routine endometrial biopsy in gynaecological practice in Nigeria

A review of 7,211 endometrial biopsy reports in a University Teaching Hospital in Nigeria, over a 6 year period revealed that 90.5% of samples from 5,795 patients with infertility and 83.4% of 1,416 patients with abnormal uterine bleeding were essentially normal. The yield for tuberculosis endometritis (0.49%) and uterine corpus malignancy (0.58%) was low. Eighty percent of patients with uterine malignancy were aged 40 years and above. In an era of medical audit and scarce human and financial resources, the wisdom of routine endometrial biopsy in all women with infertility and those with abnormal uterine bleeding who are younger than 40 years, is called to question.