Balloon catheter vs. cervical vacuum cup for hysterosalpingography: a prospective, randomized, single-blinded study.

Hysterosalpingography can be a painless or a mildly painful procedure in most patients if it is performed using nontraumatic devices. However, in our study about 20% of women complained of moderate and about 1% of severe pain during the procedure. Recently, it has been demonstrated that routine pretreatment with nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs does not reduce pain score in comparison with placebo. This finding confirms that further studies are required to assess whether an accurate preliminary evaluation of the patients might be useful to identify the subgroup of women who need analgesic pretreatment.