This one is a bit tricky.
Women’s Surgery Group writes:
“Medical therapy (birth control pills, progesterone, lupron, etc.) all treat the sypmtoms of endometriosis, but none have been shown to eliminate endometrial implants. Some implants become smaller, less visible, and less hormonally active with medical therapy, but they do not disappear. Once medical therapy is stopped, symptoms usually reappear.
“Surgical therapy is done by laparoscopy in the vast majority of cases. Unfortunately, patients often undergo repeated laparoscopies (sometimes as often as every 6 months). They are told their endometriosis keeps “coming back”. If endometriosis implants are removed (excised) during laparoscopy, those implants are gone and will not recur anytime soon. If endometriosis is diagnosed 6 months after surgery, it was not seen during the first procedure, not removed then, or was never there in the first place. When endometriosis is adequately treated during laparoscopy, it will not “come back” within a few months.”
Dr. David Redwine, a notable endometriosis specialist and surgeon, writes:
“The facts about conservative surgical intervention dispute the theory that endometriosis “comes back” in all patients. One of the highest reliable reported recurrence rates after conservative surgery is only 27%. Most studies report half that rate. If the disease is thought to return over time, that rate should be closer to 100%.”
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