Fertility specialists' views, behavior, and attitudes towards the use of endometrial scratching in Italy.

BACKGROUND: Endometrial scratching (ES) or injury is intentional damage to the endometrium performed to improve reproductive outcomes for infertile women desiring pregnancy. Moreover, recent systematic reviews with meta-analyses and randomized controlled trials demonstrated that ES is not effective, data on the safety are limited, and it should not be recommended in clinical practice. The aim of the current study was to assess the view and behavior towards ES among fertility specialists throughout infertility centers in Italy, and the relationship between these views and the attitudes towards the use of ES as an add-on in their commercial setting. METHODS: Online survey among infertility centers, affiliated to Italian Society of Human Reproduction (SIRU), was performed using a detailed questionnaire including 45 questions with the possibility to give "closed" multi-choice answers for 41 items and "open" answers for 4 items. Online data from the websites of the infertility centers resulting in affiliation with the specialists were also recorded and analyzed. The quality of information about ES given on infertility centers websites was assessed using a scoring matrix including 10 specific questions (scored from 0 to 2 points), and the possible scores ranged from 0 to 13 points ('excellent' if the score was 9 points or more, 'moderate' if the score was between 5 and 8, and 'poor' if it was 4 points or less). RESULTS: The response rate was of 60.6% (43 questionnaires / 71 infertility SIRU-affiliated centers). All included questionnaires were completed in their entirety. Most physicians (~ 70%) reported to offer ES to less than 10% of their patients. The procedure is mainly performed in the secretory phase (69.2%) using pipelle (61.5%), and usually in medical ambulatory (56.4%) before IVF cycles to improve implantation (71.8%) without drugs administration (e.g., pain drugs, antibiotics, anti-hemorrhagics, or others) before (76.8%) or after (64.1%) the procedure. Only a little proportion of infertility centers included in the analysis proposes formally the ES as an add-on procedure (9.3%), even if, when proposed, the full description of the indications, efficacy, safety, and costs is never addressed. However, the overall information quality of the websites was generally "poor" ranging from 3 to 8 and having a low total score (4.7 ± 1.6; mean ± standard deviation). CONCLUSIONS: In Italy, ES is a procedure still performed among fertility specialists for improving the implantation rate in IVF patients. Moreover, they have a poor attitude in proposing ES as an add-on in the commercial setting.

Colovesical fistula: review on conservative management, surgical techniques and minimally invasive approaches.

Colovesical fistula (CVF) is an abnormal communication between bowel and urinary bladder. Main causes are represented by complicated diverticular disease, colonic and bladder cancer and iatrogenic complications. Diagnosis is often based on patognomonic signs: faecaluria, pneumaturia and recurrent urinary tract infections. Treatment of CVF includes non-surgical and surgical strategy. The non-surgical treatment is reserved to selected patients who are unfit for surgery. Surgery of CVFs is determined by the site of the colonic lesion and patient's comorbidity. However the surgical one-stage approach should be preferred, reserving the multi-stage procedure in patients with a pelvic abscess, or with advanced malignancy, or previous radiation therapy. The sole defunctioning stoma may be an option to improve the quality of life in patients unfit for bowel resection. In open surgery the standard operative management consists in resection and anastomosis of the involved bowel segment and closure of the bladder. Laparoscopic treatment of CVFs is feasible and safe if performed by skilled surgeons. Robotic surgery for CVF treatment is safe and feasible similarly to laparoscopic one and it seems to reduce the conversion rate with respect to laparoscopy. However, further studies are needed to evaluate the advantages of robotic surgery over laparoscopy in the management of CVF. Currently, in Literature it is still debated which is the best surgical approach for CFV treatment due to the lack of RCTs and CCTs, the small sample size and the short follow-up. Further studies with higher quality and larger sample size are necessary to state the gold standard surgical treatment of CVFs.