Seminars in reproductive medicine

Chronic pelvic pain is a frustrating symptom for patients with endometriosis and is frequently refractory to hormonal and surgical management. While these therapies target ectopic endometrial lesions, they do not directly address pain due t…

Abstract Robotic technology applied to laparoscopy augments the armamentarium of the reproductive specialist. Uterine leiomyomas, adenomyosis, endometriosis, adnexal masses, sterilization reversal, and fertility preservation techniques can …

Surgical approaches to endometriosis patients with chronic pelvic pain are multimodal and require individualization. Laparoscopic approaches are preferred over laparotomy when conservatively treating endometriosis via excision or ablation/f…

Human reproduction is an inefficient process. There are several drivers of complications along the path to and during pregnancy, one of which is inflammation. Treatments to mitigate the deleterious effects of aberrant inflammation with some…

Abstract Endometriosis is a condition defined by the presence of endometrial glands and stroma in ectopic locations. While the most commonly seen symptoms of the disease are pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea, and infertility, endometriosis has also…

The main challenges of imaging for endometriosis are the detection of nonovarian disease and the evaluation of the extension of the disease into pelvic structures. Transvaginal ultrasonography (TVS) has been proposed as the first-line imagi…

Uterine fibroids affect a wide cross-section of the population, with prevalence, symptom severity, and overall disease burden generally higher among black women, likely due to both genetic and environmental factors. Potential symptoms of ut…

Endometriosis is a heritable, complex chronic inflammatory disease, for which much of the causal pathogenic mechanism remains unknown. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to date have identified 12 single nucleotide polymorphisms at 10 i…

The clinical management of endometriosis is a complex interaction with the patient that requires insight and experience. Paramount in this discussion is the issue of quality of life for the patient and her family. In economic terms the prod…

The recognition and management of endometriosis in the adolescent patient is challenging. A strong clinical suspicion for endometriosis should be maintained in the adolescent who suffers from acyclic pelvic pain as well as absenteeism from …

Extrapelvic endometriosis is a rare and complex phenomenon. The pathologic mechanism of intrapelvic endometriosis is generally accepted as being largely due to retrograde menstruation through the fallopian tubes; however, the mechanism by w…

This review summarizes the evidence concerning effects of night shift work on women's reproductive health, specifically difficulty in conceiving and miscarriage. We distinguish between fixed night shift and rotating night shift, as the popu…

Ovarian endometriomas affect 17 to 44% of women with endometriosis, and are often associated with pelvic pain and infertility. Treatment options include expectant management, medical and/or surgical treatment, and in vitro fertilization and…

The management of endometriosis-related infertility remains debated. However, in recent years, the role of in vitro fertilization (IVF) has progressively grown. Reasons to explain this change include (1) the improvement of the effectiveness…

Endometriosis is a common cause of infertility and disabling pelvic pain in reproductive age women. The most widely accepted theory of its pathogenesis is the retrograde flow of menstrual products, although extra-abdominal and extrapelvic d…

Endometriosis is a common cause of pelvic pain in women of reproductive age. Traditional medical therapies are hormonal in nature, including estrogen-progestin contraceptives, progestins, and gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists. …

Nerve-sparing surgery is an emerging technique for surgery-related dysfunction. Within the past 15 years, an essential progress in recognition and understanding of the anatomy of the pelvic autonomous nervous system has been made. Surgical …

Endometriosis has clearly three distinct clinical presentations and deep endometriosis, especially compromising the rectosigmoid is probably the most concerning one for both patients and surgeons. Currently, with the available tools, it is …

Ovarian aging is characterized by a decline in both the total number and overall quality of oocytes, the latter of which has been experimentally tied to mitochondrial dysfunction. Clinical studies in the late 1990s demonstrated that transfe…

As applications for IVF have expanded over the years, so too have approaches to controlled ovarian stimulation (COS) for IVF. With this expansion and improved knowledge of basic reproductive biology, there is increasing interest in how COS …

Regenerative medicine offers the potential for replacement or repair of different types of cells within damaged tissues or the tissues themselves, typically through cell therapy or tissue engineering. Stem cells are critical to these approa…

As Guest Editor for this edition of Seminars in Reproductive Medicine, I welcome you to this exciting selection of papers regarding inflammatory factors in reproductive medicine. As a biological process governing complex immunological actio…

Endometriosis has been initially described as the presence of ectopic endometrial tissue on pelvic organs or in extrapelvic sites; and this has been used as its key pathologic feature ever since. Endometriosis responds to fluctuations in es…

Endometriosis is a nonmalignant, but potentially metastatic, gynecological condition manifested by the extrauterine growth of inflammatory endometrial implants. Ten percent of reproductive-age women are affected and commonly suffer pelvic p…