[How I treat ... surgically benign uterine lesions in 2002]

For 20 years, pre-operative investigations have increasingly improved the gynaecological diagnosis, allowing to have an accurate idea on the size and the nature of the lesion to be treated when the matter is to carry out the surgical treatment. In the meantime, the gynaecological surgery has seen its endoscopic surgical techniques improved due to the development of these diagnostic techniques itself. The operative hysteroscopy allows to decrease considerably the amount of hysterectomies for benign lesions. The operative laparoscopy has become the first intended treatment for many pathologies. This latter allows performing either laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomies or complete laparoscopic hysterectomies. On the other hand, even though these endoscopic techniques were developing, the vaginal hysterectomy strongly returned, in such a way that it became the dominating way, so that the rule is to perform abdominal hysterectomy only when it is impossible to carry out a low way hysterectomy. Consequently, the gynaecologist surgeon has to be capable, in 2002, to perform all these surgical techniques in order to offer to the patient the best treatment, matching as good as feasible according to the pathology to be treated and her anatomical status.