Endometrial ablation

Paul McGurgan, Peter O’Donovan
In: Current Opinion in Obstetrics & Gynecology · 2003 · vol. 15(4) , pp. 327–332 · doi:10.1097/00001703-200308000-00006 · W4250946267
article OA: closed CC0
Full text JSON View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-10 ⓘ

Endometrial ablation is a validated treatment, but newer techniques require more long-term data on efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness, with hysterectomy rates not declining as anticipated.

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

Abstract

Purpose of review Although endometrial ablation has now been accepted practice for more than 20 years, it continues to be a source of research, controversy and speculation. This is illustrated by the 175 articles found in PubMed between the years 2000 and 2003 under the search term ‘endometrial ablation’ commissioned as part of the preparation for this article. Recent findings The so-called first-generation methods (laser, resection, rollerball) have now got long-term follow-up data of up to 20 years. A few of the second-generation devices have published long-term follow-up data of 5 years. All of the second-generation devices assessed in randomized trials with the first-generation methods compare favourably; however, there are few data on cost effectiveness. Similarly, there are few data comparing endometrial ablation with the Mirena intrauterine device. Summary Conventional endometrial ablation has been extensively validated; however, many of the newer techniques have inadequate patient numbers or lengths of follow-up on which to evaluate their long-term efficacy, safety or cost effectiveness fully. The anticipated decline in hysterectomy rates with the advent of endometrial destruction methods has not occurred, and this may indicate a lower threshold for surgical management.
Full text 1,353 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · click to expand
Endometrial ablation - Paul McGurgan - Peter O'Donovan Purpose of review Although endometrial ablation has now been accepted practice for more than 20 years, it continues to be a source of research, controversy and speculation. This is illustrated by the 175 articles found in PubMed between the years 2000 and 2003 under the search term ‘endometrial ablation’ commissioned as part of the preparation for this article. Recent findings The so-called first-generation methods (laser, resection, rollerball) have now got long-term follow-up data of up to 20 years. A few of the second-generation devices have published long-term follow-up data of 5 years. All of the second-generation devices assessed in randomized trials with the first-generation methods compare favourably; however, there are few data on cost effectiveness. Similarly, there are few data comparing endometrial ablation with the Mirena intrauterine device. Summary Conventional endometrial ablation has been extensively validated; however, many of the newer techniques have inadequate patient numbers or lengths of follow-up on which to evaluate their long-term efficacy, safety or cost effectiveness fully. The anticipated decline in hysterectomy rates with the advent of endometrial destruction methods has not occurred, and this may indicate a lower threshold for surgical management.

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Citation neighborhood (sparse)

Too few in-corpus citations on either side for a chart; here are the lists.

Cites (4)

References (27)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK