Endometriosis – Laparoscopic Intervention

Transcript

Laparoscopic Intervention is a way that we can confirm the diagnosis of endometriosis. It is typically performed in an outpatient setting where you have an anesthesiologist and we place ports on the abdominal cavity, which are small incisions. And we use these to look inside of the abdomen. Once we look inside of the abdomen, we can see different things, but we’re typically looking for is endometriosis implants, which are areas of endometriosis that are implanted throughout the pelvis. We look at the ovary, we look at the tubes, we look at the abdominal pelvic cavity in general, to see if we see any evidence of this. We look in the, what we call cul de sac, which is the front and the back of the uterus. And we look at the ligaments that are attached to the uterus. If we see anything consistent with an implant, we often will biopsy it because again, biopsy is the only way to confirm that there is endometriosis. Once we identify the endometriosis, we oftentimes, during the surgery, we’ll perform a fulguration, which is where we burn the implants. This will help to resolve a person’s pain, very commonly.