Hormone therapy for endometriosis and surgical menopause

Al Kadri H, Hanan Al Kadri, Samar Hassan, Hassan S, Al-Fozan HM, Haya Al-Fozan, Haya M Al-Fozan, Ali Hajeer, Ali H. Hajeer
The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2009 · vol. 2010(11) , pp. CD005997 · doi:10.1002/14651858.cd005997.pub2 · PMID:19160262 · PMC13138584 · W2118814524
review OA: green CC0 ⤵ 63 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-07-02 ⓘ

This review found that hormone therapy for post-surgical menopause in women with endometriosis may lead to pain and disease recurrence, though evidence is not statistically significant and further study is needed.

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

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Endometriosis is characterized by the presence of ectopic endometrial tissue that might lead to many distressing and debilitating symptoms. Despite available studies supporting standard hormone therapy for women with endometriosis and post-surgical menopause, there is still a concern that estrogens may induce a recurrence of the disease and its symptoms. OBJECTIVES: This review aimed to look at pain and disease recurrence in women with endometriosis who used hormone therapy for post-surgical menopause. SEARCH STRATEGY: We searched the Cochrane Menstrual Disorders and Subfertility Group Specialized Register (March 2008), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library 2008, Issue 3), MEDLINE (1966 to March 2008), EMBASE (1980 to March 2008), and references lists of articles. Relevant journals and conference proceedings were handsearched. SELECTION CRITERIA: Randomized controlled trials studying hormone therapy for women with endometriosis in post-surgical menopause. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Review authors assessed the eligibility of trials and their quality. MAIN RESULTS: Two studies fulfilled our inclusion criteria. One trial compared the nonstop transdermal application of 17beta-estradiol (0.05 mg/day) combined with cyclic medroxy progesterone acetate (10 mg per day) for 12 days per month in women with a conserved uterus with nonstop tibolone (2.5 mg/day). The second trial used sequential administration of estrogens and progesterone with two 22 cm(2) patches applied weekly to produce a controlled release of 0.05 mg/day. Micronized progesterone was administered orally (200 mg/day) for 14 days with a 16-day interval free of treatment. Pain and dyspareunia The first trial reported recurrence of pain in the estrogen and progesterone arm in 4/10 of women compared with 1/11 in the tibilone arm. In the latter, 4/115 women reported recurrence of pain in the treatment group compared with 0/57 patients in the no-treatment arm. Neither finding was statistically different.Confirmed recurrence or exacerbation of endometriosis This outcome was not reported in the first trial. The second found that 2/115 of the treatment group developed recurrence of endometriosis with no recurrence reported in the no-treatment group. This was not statistically significant. No woman was re-operated on in the no-treatment group compared with 2/115 in the treatment group. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: Hormone replacement therapy for women with endometriosis in post-surgical menopause could result in pain and disease recurrence. However, the evidence in the literature is not strong enough to suggest depriving severely symptomatic patients from this treatment. There is a need for more randomised controlled studies.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosisdyspareunia

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Hormone Replacement Therapy Menopause, Premature Postoperative Complications Endometriosis Estradiol Estradiol Female Hormone Replacement Therapy Hormone Replacement Therapy Humans Medroxyprogesterone Acetate Medroxyprogesterone Acetate Menopause, Premature Norpregnenes Norpregnenes Pain Pain Postoperative Complications Progesterone

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 (50)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-09-03T06:15:13.668130+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:14:18.065553+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK