[Endometriosis: a mysterious and incapacitating disorder].

Endometriosis can be a highly incapacitating disorder. The only effective treatment used to be surgery (increasingly by laparoscopy), and hormone therapy was solely used as an adjuvant. Today, thanks in particular to progress in sonography and MRI, and to the growing realization of the frequent role of psychological factors, medical treatment is becoming more commonplace. Drug therapy must be envisaged in the very long term, however, because its efficacy disappears on treatment cessation.