Prevalence of teenage uterine fibroid: The radiologic perspective

Background: Uterine fibroids are the most common benign neoplasms among women but are rare and less seen before puberty.

Objective: This study is to evaluate the prevalence of teenage uterine fibroids using radiologic imaging. 

Materials and Method: It was a cross-sectional study among 1225 teenage girls over a 12-month period. Participation was voluntary with patients’ confidentiality maintained. Ethical approval from the ethics committee was also obtained from participants, or guidance before the study. Age, clinical presentation, and provisional diagnosis were obtained from the referral form while the weight and height were measured before the pelvic ultrasonography. A full bladder was obtained by requesting the participants to take about 500 ml of water before the scan using a 3.5 MHz curvilinear probe coupled into a GE LOGIQ 5 ultrasound machine. Each participant lay supine on the examination couch in the presence of a chaperone. An ultrasound acoustic gel was applied on the skin of the exposed body region to obliterate the air interface between the skin and the transducer. The findings were documented, collated, and analyzed with descriptive statistics using IBM SPSS version 23.0 statistical software for Windows, and results were presented as tables, charts, and figures.

Results: The age distribution of the participants was 12 years (8.65%; n = 106), 13 years (15.27%; n = 187), and 16 years (23.35%; n = 286). The highest frequency of uterine leiomyoma was seen among those within the 85th to 94th percentile of BMI. Uterine fibroids were seen at ages 13, 14, and 15 years, accounting for 0.58% (n=22) of the participants. Other findings were PID (7.75%, n=106), UTI (7.52%, n=10), and ovarian cyst (1.50%, n=12). 

Conclusion: The study also concludes that uterine fibroids can be seen among teenagers aged 13 to 15 years with a point prevalence of 1.8%. Also conclude that the disease is commoner among overweight teenagers.