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Mr Tariq Miskry
Independent Doctor's Federation
What are the risks of endometriosis surgery?
Mr Tariq Miskry lists some of the risks of endometriosis surgery, which are due to the complexity of the disease itself and the fact that it is often located on or closely linked to the internal organs.
Transcript
There are general risks of surgery, but the main risks to do with endometriosis relate to the complexity of the disease itself. So we have this small group of women who have more complex disease where they have fibrotic, invasive disease that involves other structures, and in this group of women that's where the majority of risk lies. Because then you're dissecting, surgically, around structures such as the ureter, which is the tube that goes from the kidney to the bladder, as well as around the bowel, which means both those structures are at risk of injury. In some cases, endometriosis is invasive enough that those structures need to be surgically treated as well. And if you have to have surgery on your ureter, that may mean that it has to be reimplanted into the bladder. If you have surgery on your bowel, it may mean an excision of part of the bowel, which will sometimes mean the need for a temporary stoma. So that has big implications, which is why we try often to manage these cases medically.