Is an often-painful condition in which tissue that is similar to the inner lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus. It often affects the ovaries, fallopian tubes and the tissue lining the pelvis. Rarely but sometimes can happen, that endometriosis growths may be found in other areas beside pelvis.
It causes a chronic inflammatory reaction that may result in the formation of scar tissue (adhesions, fibrosis) within the pelvis and other parts of the body. Several lesion types have been described:
Symptoms
The main symptom of endometriosis is pelvic pain. It’s often linked with menstrual periods. Although many people have cramping during their periods, those with endometriosis often describe menstrual pain that’s far worse than usual. The pain also may become worse over time.
Common symptoms of endometriosis include:
The seriousness of your pain may not be a sign of the number or extent of endometriosis growths in your body. You could have a small amount of tissue with bad pain. Or you could have lots of endometriosis tissue with little or no pain.
Still, some people with endometriosis have no symptoms. Often, they find out they have the condition when they can’t get pregnant or after they get surgery for another reason.
For those with symptoms, endometriosis sometimes may seem like other conditions that can cause pelvic pain. These include pelvic inflammatory disease or ovarian cysts. Or it may be confused with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which causes bouts of diarrhea, constipation and stomach cramps. IBS also can happen along with endometriosis. This makes it harder for your health care team to find the exact cause of your symptoms.
Causes
Not clear yet. Possible theories:
Challenges and priorities
What to do?
In OsteoMedica our osteopaths Aleksandra Zegalski and Deborah Tassi perform pelvic floor evaluation and internal gynecological techniques.