Endometriosis Specialists

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Remember, the information on my website, podcast, Instagram, and any other ways I communicate and/or produce content is educational information only and not medical advice. Always check with your qualified medical professional before making any changes to your treatment plan for endometriosis or any other health problems. See my full disclaimer here.

Can my regular gynecologist treat my endometriosis?

Generally, no. Endometriosis treatment needs to be its own specialty, like the way that gynecologic oncology is. When it’s suspected that a patient has gynecological cancer, they are referred to specialists who have extensive training in the diagnosis and treatment of these cancers. The same thing should happen when a patient has endometriosis – they should be referred to an actual expert in endometriosis.

Unfortunately, endometriosis is a disease that is mired by misinformation leading to gynecologists who are uninformed and misinformed about this disease. This is not those doctor’s faults – much of this stems from misinformation in their medical education, medical training, and the endometriosis clinical guidelines themselves. Because of this, many gynecologists think that they know how to treat endometriosis when in reality they don’t, offering the patient a hysterectomy or ablation as “treatments”, or telling them to stay on hormonal medications for years without even informing the patient that excision is an option. 

The term “specialist” means nothing

Anyone can call themselves an “expert” or “specialist” in endometriosis, because there is no formal standard in gynecology to qualify the use of that title. A doctor might call themselves an endometriosis expert/specialist, but is only doing ablation or is only prescribing hormone treatments, and doesn’t even do excision –  this is not an endometriosis specialist.

However, there are true endometriosis experts or specialists, but it’s important to look at their qualifications and ask them questions to judge this, rather than the title they’ve given themselves – since again, anyone can say they are a specialist.

Excision surgery is operator dependent

Excision surgery is renowned as the most challenging gynecologic surgery. Excision surgery is highly operator dependent and the surgeon’s skills influence the surgery outcome (but remember – no outcome is guaranteed with any surgeon). 

Due to how difficult it is to find an expert surgeon, it’s common for people to travel to centers that are dedicated to excision surgery with high volume experts. 

It’s important to distinguish between excision surgery and expert excision surgery

• They call themselves excision surgeons but do ablation instead of excision
• They do a combination of ablation and excision (for example, they excise your endometrioma but ablate superficial endometriosis)
• They leave endometriosis behind unintentionally because they don’t have the skills to recognize subtle appearances of endometriosis; or they don’t excise deep enough or with wide enough margins
• They leave endometriosis behind intentionally because they lack the skills to safely remove it from all locations, such as the bowel or bladder

It can’t be stressed enough that different excision surgeons have different skill levels, training, experience, and philosophies.