[Endometriosis and surviving adolescence].
Endometriosis is a recurrent and painful disease which sometimes disturbs severely the quality of life of women who suffer from it. It is then logical to include a psychological back-up to its medical and surgical treatment. Nevertheless this support is not often offered to patients. One can hypothesize another and completely different way of seeing the problem: the mood swings and depression of endometriotic patients could possibly be, at least in some of them, the cause of the graft of endometrial cells and not the effect of pain and infertility. The mechanism of the development of endometriotic lesions could be related to a lowering of immune defences due to an alteration of the psycho-neuro-endocrino-immunologic network, resulting from difficult life experiences which mostly happen during adolescence. This concept may have beneficial effects for the patient whose case would be more understood in depth. But very few medical teams consider it worthwhile to include in their practices.
Belaisch
J
J
Service de gynécologie-obstétrique, hôpital Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, 74-82, avenue Denfert-Rochereau, 75674 Paris cedex 14, France. jean.belaisch@wanadoo.fr
Allart
J-P
JP
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology; D004715:Endometriosis / Q000473:pathology / Q000523:psychology / Q000601:surgery / Q000628:therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007247:Infertility, Female / Q000209:etiology; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D011788:Quality of Life; D016896:Treatment Outcome