Lavado de alto volume para avaliação bacteriológica e citológica uterina em éguas

Abstract

Endometritis, an inflammation of the endometrium, is one of the leading causes of infertility in mares. Diagnosis typically involves uterine cytology and microbiological culture, among other tests. Uterine lavage with low-volume Ringer’s lactate solution (100–250 mL) is commonly used for sample collection. However, low-volume lavage may not completely fill the uterine cavity, potentially limiting its representativeness. Recent studies have adopted high-volume lavage (1 liter), particularly for microbiological evaluation. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess the efficacy of high-volume lavage performed during embryo collection for diagnosing subclinical endometritis in mares through microbiological and cytological analyses. The experiment involved 28 embryo donor mares. High-volume lavage samples (1 liter of Ringer’s lactate) were collected during the first flush for embryo recovery during diestrus (n=14), while low-volume lavage samples (250 mL of Ringer’s lactate) were collected at the beginning of the subsequent estrus cycle (n=14). For microbiological culture, 20 mL of the collected fluid was sampled, centrifuged, and streaked on BHI broth. Another sample was centrifuged, and the resulting pellet was used to prepare slides for exfoliative cytology examination under microscopy. At the end of the experiment, cytological and microbiological results from high- and low-volume lavages were compared for each animal, revealing no significant differences in bacterial identification capacity between the groups. Moreover, positive cytology results were observed in 10% of low-volume and 3% of high-volume samples, with high-volume lavage showing lower performance in cytological evaluation. Nonetheless, high-volume lavage proves to be an efficient and advantageous approach in reproductive management, particularly by leveraging the fluid collected during embryo recovery, reducing additional interventions, and optimizing resources.