If you have surgery for endometriosis, you'll need a general anaesthetic. This will put you to sleep during the operation. Sometimes surgeons do this operation at the same time as other tests.

There are two types of surgery: keyhole surgery and open surgery.

The surgeon makes a small cut into your abdomen and uses a narrow tube with a special camera (called a laparoscope) to look for damage or scars around the ovaries, fallopian tubes and womb. To remove the endometriosis, the surgeon uses small operating tools through other small cuts in your abdomen.

It takes a few days to recover.

If your endometriosis is very bad, surgeons do open surgery rather than keyhole surgery. This is a more serious operation. It takes about six to eight weeks to recover.

The surgeon makes a large cut in your abdomen and looks directly at your ovaries, tubes and womb.

Glossary

fallopian tubes

Fallopian tubes are the two tubes that come out of the top of a woman's womb. They carry eggs from the ovaries to the womb.

general anaesthetic

You may have a type of medicine called a general anaesthetic when you have surgery. It is given to make you unconscious so you don't feel pain when you have surgery.

ovaries

Women have two ovaries, one on each side of their womb. They are small glands that store eggs. Inside the ovaries are hundreds of thousands of pre-eggs, called follicles. Some of these grow into eggs.

For more terms related to Fertility problems

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