Medical and Surgical Therapies for Pain Associated with Endometriosis

C A Winkel, Craig A. Winkel, Anthony R. Scialli, A R Scialli
Journal of women's health & gender-based medicine · 2001 · vol. 10(2) , pp. 137–162 · doi:10.1089/152460901300039485 · PMID:11268298 · W2018310337
review OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 49 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-06 ⓘ

Endometriosis pain is treated with hormonal therapies showing high effectiveness and low adverse effects, and surgical options with limited comparative data on efficacy and complications.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Endometriosis is a common condition for which a number of treatments have been proposed. Medical treatments are based on the hormonal responsiveness of endometriosis implants. These therapies include progestins (with or without estrogens), androgens, and gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogs. Surgical treatments may include hysterectomy with oophorectomy or organ-sparing surgery involving ablation or resection of visible lesions of endometriosis and restoration of pelvic anatomy. There are no studies that directly compare the effectiveness or adverse effects of medical therapy and surgical therapy. Studies on medical therapy compare different treatments with placebo or with other active treatments. Hormone-based therapies for endometriosis show 80%-100% effectiveness in relief of pelvic pain over a 6-month course of therapy. Serious adverse outcomes after medical therapy are unusual. Studies on surgical therapy are largely anecdotal, with noncomparative reports on a variety of surgical methods. A few comparative surgical studies have been reported. Because of the noncomparative nature of many of the surgical studies, the use of combinations of surgical procedures and techniques in the reported studies, and the reporting of results from surgeons with an unusually high level of technical skill, the gynecological practitioner has little basis in the literature for assessing the optimum surgical approach. Surgical complications are believed to be underreported and may be related to how aggressive a surgical procedure is undertaken.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Endometriosis Pain Pain Androgens Androgens Contraceptives, Oral Contraceptives, Oral Danazol Danazol Endometriosis Endometriosis Estrogen Antagonists Estrogen Antagonists Female Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Hormones Hormones Humans

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (100)

Cited by (49)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-11T06:19:48.454388+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:13:24.901228+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-06-02T02:00:03.124865+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK