[Medical treatment of endometriosis]

The causal treatment of endometriosis is based on the fact that the disease is hormone-dependent. As it has been well established that endometriotic lesions heal at the end of pregnancy or after menopause, the principle of medical treatment is to imitate the effects of one or the other of these two situations by means of oestrogen-progestogen combinations, high-dose progestogen therapy or, more recently, analogues of LH-RH agonists. These treatments have proved to be effective on the lesions but they do not prevent recurrences. The indications of medical treatments administered alone or combined with surgery are still much debated.