Office Hysteroscopy. An operative gold standard technique and an important contribution to Patient Safety

J. Mairos, P. Di Martino

According to World Health Organization (WHO), about 1 out of 10 hospitalized patients suffers an adverse event, in developed countries, being an adverse event an injury related to medical management, in contrast to complications of disease. These events cause both unnecessary suffering and huge cost to health systems. This issue is so important that WHO has defined it as a global health problem and in 2004 launched the World Alliance for Patient Safety, with the aim to coordinate, disseminate and accelerate improvements in Patient Safety. Office Hysteroscopy (OH), as an independent technique of the hospital circuit, has the ideal conditions to be qualified as the gold standard technique for the surgical treatment of intracavitary uterine pathology. It does not require the use of an operating room, hospital admission and general or locoregional anaesthesia. The appropriate surgical techniques, allied to pain control, allow OH to resolve much more than 90 % of the surgical needs of the intracavitary uterine pathology, thus being an important contribution for Patient Safety.