Menstrual Disorder Technologies

Menstrual disorder technologies are surgical, conceptual, and pharmaceutical techniques and tools used to diagnose and treat menstrual disorders. A surgical procedure called a laparoscopy must be performed to diagnose definitively the cause of many menstrual disorders. A wide array of pharmaceutical therapies is used to treat menstrual disorders. Some therapies, such as nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, target particular symptoms; most therapies used to treat these disorders modify or interrupt the menstrual cycle through hormonal manipulation. Many of the therapies currently used to treat menstrual problems were not developed for that purpose. In some Western countries, it is an approved treatment for endometriosis and an unapproved but common treatment for premenstrual syndrome, dysmenorrhea, and other functional menstrual disorders. Laparoscopy facilitates the use of another technology, a conceptual one used specifically in the diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis: the Revised American Fertility Society (R-AFS) classification. The objectivity of the R-AFS taxonomy has been questioned by many prominent endometriosis specialists.