Post-operative use of oral contraceptive pills for prevention of anatomical relapse or symptom-recurrence after conservative surgery for endometriosis

Renato Seracchioli, R Seracchioli, Mohamed Mabrouk, M Mabrouk, Lisa Manuzzi, L Manuzzi, C Vicenzi, Claudia Vicenzi, C Frascà, A Elmakky, Amira Elmakky, Stefano Venturoli, S Venturoli
Human Reproduction · 2009 · vol. 24(11) , pp. 2729–2735 · doi:10.1093/humrep/dep259 · PMID:19625310 · W2109848598
review OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 122 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Post-operative oral contraceptive pills used for over one year after conservative endometriosis surgery reduced anatomical relapse and recurrence of dysmenorrhea, but not dyspareunia.

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

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Endometriosis recurrence after conservative surgery is not infrequent. Variable regimens of hormonal therapy have been proposed as adjuvant post-operative measures for prophylaxis against recurrence. Among these, the combined oral contraceptive pills (OCP), represents a valuable option in terms of safety and tolerability for long-term use. The objective of this review is to evaluate the effect of post-operative use of OCP in preventing symptom recurrence, and/or anatomical relapse of endometriosis. METHODS: A systematic search of Medline identified seven studies evaluating post-operative OCP treatment on prevention of endometriosis recurrence. RESULTS: A reduction in anatomical relapse rate was observed when oral contraceptive therapy was administered for more than 1 year after conservative surgery. Post-operative use of OCP was associated with a reduction in frequency and intensity of dysmenorrhoea recurrence. No association was found between OCP therapy and dyspareunia prevention, although the effect of OCP on chronic pelvic pain was conflicting. CONCLUSION: Long-term OCP therapy can be a reliable adjuvant post-operative measure to prevent or reduce frequency/severity of recurrent dysmenorrhoea and anatomical relapse of endometriosis. Since both continuous and cyclic OCP administration regimens seem to have comparable effects, the choice of regimen can be modulated according to patient preferences. The protective effect seems to be related to the duration of treatment.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

mesh:D004715endometriosischronic_pelvic_paindysmenorrheadyspareunia

MeSH descriptors

Contraceptives, Oral, Hormonal Endometriosis Clinical Trials as Topic Contraceptives, Oral, Hormonal Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Humans Postoperative Period Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic Retrospective Studies Secondary Prevention Treatment Outcome

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 (34)

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
License: CC0 · commercial use OK