Diagnostic value of pelvic sonography criteria in diagnosis of girls’ precocious puberty in Mashhad

Precocious puberty can cause important physical and psychiatric complications, although timely diagnosis and treatment can prevent these complications. The gonadotropin-releasing hormone stimulation test is the diagnostic test for central precocious puberty that due to the limitation and invasiveness of the test, this study was performed with aim to evaluate the complementary role of pelvic ultrasound as a noninvasive and cost benefit test for diagnosis of precocious puberty. This cross-sectional study was performed on 15 girls aged < 8 years who had referred by their parents with complain of secondary sexual characteristic to the pediatric endocrinology clinic of Imam Reza and Ghaem hospitals in Mashhad in 2018. In addition to the measurements of height and weight and BMI, gonadotropin-releasing hormone stimulation test was performed for the subjects. Girls with LH levels ≥ 5 IU / L were referred to the radiology department of Imam Reza hospital for pelvic ultrasonography. Pelvic ultrasonography was performed by radiologist using a conventional full-bladder 2- to5-MHz transducer. Length, width and height of the uterus, uterus volume, length, width, height and volume of the ovaries were measured. Then, the results were compared with ultrasonography of 15 subjects as control group. Data were analyzed by SPSS software (version 16) and t-test and Mann-Whitney test. P<0.05 was considered statistically significant. There was significant difference between case and control groups in terms of all criteria of sonography (p=0.001), except for transverse diameter of the left ovary that there was no significant difference between the two groups (p= 0.102). The best criterion among the criteria was the volume of the right ovary (with area under the curve = 0.871) and then uterus volume (with area under the curve = 0.864) and uterus length (with area under the curve= 0.851). Ultrasonography can be considered as a useful method for the diagnosis of central precocious puberty in girls, although additional survey on larger population is needed to confirm the accuracy of this method.