• Andrzej Starczewski, Agnieszka Brodowska, and Jacek Brodowski.
• Department of Reproduction and Gynecology, Pomeranian Medical University of Szczecin, Poland.
• Pol. Merkur. Lekarski. 2009 Mar 1; 26 (153): 231-3.

AbstractPelvic endometriosis in women is a very common disease. The incidence of this condition in Poland in reproductive age women is about 7-15%, and as much as 50% of cases is diagnosed in patients with co-existing infertility and/or pain and adhesion of a true pelvis. The choice of a therapeutic method depends on the patient's age, stage of the disease, desire for pregnancy, the presence of adhesion, focus localization and a reaction to previous treatment. Currently, the most popular is surgical treatment sometimes followed by pharmacotherapy. Pharmacological treatment includes hormone therapy and symptomatic treatment, also the use of painkillers. Hormonal agents are administered to suppress ovarian activity and cause atrophy of ectopic foci of endometrium. At present, post-surgical pharmacotherapy for endometriosis uses mainly such hormones as: the Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill (COCP), progestagens, danazol, GnRh (gonadotropin-releasing hormone) analogues, aromatase inhibitors and other less common drugs. Also other therapeutic procedures are recommended in endometriosis treatment, procedures which support and in certain clinical situations even replace classical pharmacological methods. Some of them are immunotherapy and a diet rich in isoflavones, organic compounds which modulate estrogen receptor activity. Numerous clinical trials proved that preoperative pharmacotherapy does not improve treatment results and is not applicable to endometriomas in women. On the other hand, postoperative pharmacotherapy still ignites controversy. As maintained by the most recent literature, in the case of mild endometriosis (clinical Stage I and II according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine) endometrial ablation has better effects than observation only, however postoperative pharmacotherapy does not improve the results of treatment. In more severe cases (clinical Stage III and IV), the best results are achieved by the combined treatment. Nevertheless, no randomized research has been carried out on a wide scale in this group of patients.

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