Recurrent endometriosis: a battle against an unknown enemy

Systematic review / meta-analysis OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 60 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This review examines various definitions of endometriosis recurrence and their impact on reported recurrence rates, aiming to clarify the nature of this post-surgical challenge.

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

Abstract

Recurrence of endometriosis after conservative surgery is not an uncommon finding. There is no uniformity, however, on what the term 'recurrence' means. Recurrence is variously defined in the literature as the relapse of pain, clinical or instrumental detection of an endometriotic lesion, repeat rise in CA 125 levels, or evidence of recurrence found during repeat surgery. Consequently, the reported recurrence rate varies widely (0-89%) in the different series, depending on its definition and the type of study performed. As endometriosis recurrence seems to be an indeterminate enemy, we set out to examine exactly what we were fighting in our everyday battle. In this narrative review, we aimed to seek an answer to questions related to endometriosis recurrence, some of which are often asked by our patients.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

dysmenorrheadyspareuniaendometriosischronic_pelvic_pain

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis CA-125 Antigen CA-125 Antigen CA-125 Antigen Dysmenorrhea Dysmenorrhea Dysmenorrhea Dyspareunia Dyspareunia Dyspareunia Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Female Humans Humans Pelvic Pain Pelvic Pain

Citation neighborhood (2-hop)

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. Outer rings show 2-hop neighbours — papers reached through the immediate citers/citees. [ collapse to 1-hop ]

References (77)

Cited by (50)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-10-13T06:10:10.580696+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T21:25:31.705136+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-10-13T06:25:51.201866+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK