Laparoscopic surgery for pelvic pain associated with endometriosis

Tal Z Jacobson, James M N Duffy, James MN Duffy, David Barlow, David H. Barlow, Philippe R Koninckx, Ray Garry
The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2009 · pp. CD001300 · doi:10.1002/14651858.cd001300.pub2 · PMID:19821276 · W2127361227
review OA: closed CC0 RETRACTED ⤵ 182 in-corpus citations
Retraction notice. Marked retracted by OpenAlex; see publisher for the formal retraction notice.
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Laparoscopic surgery for endometriosis-associated pelvic pain significantly improved pain outcomes compared to diagnostic laparoscopy alone.

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

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Endometriosis is the presence of endometrial glands or stroma in sites other than the uterine cavity. It is variable in both its surgical appearance and clinical manifestation often with poor correlation between the two. Surgical treatment of endometriosis aims to remove visible areas of endometriosis and restore anatomy by division of adhesions and relieve painful symptoms. OBJECTIVES: To assess the efficacy of laparoscopic surgery in the treatment of pelvic pain associated with endometriosis. SEARCH STRATEGY: For the update in July 2009 we searched the Cochrane Menstrual Disorders and Subfertility Group's specialised register of trials (searched July 2009), the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (The Cochrane Library, Issue 2, 2009), MEDLINE (1966 July 2009), EMBASE (1980 July 2009), and reference lists of articles. SELECTION CRITERIA: Randomised controlled trials were selected comparing the effectiveness of laparoscopic surgery used to treat pelvic pain associated with endometriosis, with other treatment modalities or diagnostic laparoscopy only. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Assessment of trial quality and extraction of relevant data was performed independently by two reviewers. MAIN RESULTS: Five studies were included in the meta-analysis, including three full papers and two conference reports. All the randomised controlled trials with the exception of Lalchandani 2003 compared different laparoscopic surgical techniques with diagnotic laparoscopy only. Lalchandani 2003 compared laparoscopic coagulation therapy with diagnostic laparoscopy and medical treatment. Three studies (Abbott 2004; Sutton 1994; Tutunaru 2006) reported the pain scores six months post operatively. Meta-analysis demonstrated an advantage of laparoscopic surgery when compared to diagnostic laparoscopy only (OR of 5.72 95%Cl 3.09 to 10.60 ; 171 participants, three trials, Analysis 1.1). A single study (Tutunaru 2006) reported pain scores twelve months after the procedure. Analysis demonstrated an advantage of laparoscopic surgery when compared to diagnostic laparoscopy only (OR of 7.72 95%Cl 2.97 to 20.06 ; 33 participants, one trial, Analysis 1.1). AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: Laparoscopic surgery results in improved pain outcomes when compared to diagnostic laparoscopy alone. There were few women diagnosed with severe endometriosis included in the meta-analysis and therefore any conclusions from this meta-analysis regarding treatment of severe endometriosis should be made with caution. It is not possible to draw conclusions from the meta-analysis which specific laparoscopic surgical intervention is most effective.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

mesh:D004715mesh:D017699endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Laparoscopy Laser Therapy Pelvic Pain Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Humans Pelvic Pain Pelvic Pain Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic Tissue Adhesions Tissue Adhesions

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 (38)

Cited by (50)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-04T01:30:01.192114+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:13:59.677786+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-06-02T02:00:03.124865+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK