Ask an Endo Surgeon: How Often is Endometriosis Found Outside of the Pelvis? Dr. Haverland

Dr. Rachael Haverland, MD, MS, FACOG is passionate about helping women feel their best by resolving their infertility and pelvic pain through endometriosis excision surgery. Possessing an extensive educational background—which includes a prominent fellowship at the Mayo Clinic among other subspecialty training tenures—Dr. Haverland is uniquely qualified to provide care in her areas of focus: pelvic pain, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, and pelvic floor dysfunction.

At Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine, our pelvic pain specialists provide a functional, rehab approach to pelvic pain. When you visit one of our offices, you spend an hour with your doctor reviewing in detail your medical history and symptoms. Then, we perform an internal exam (no speculum) to evaluate your nerves and muscles. Together, we'll discuss an individual treatment plan that gets to the root cause of your pain and helps you to feel better. The best part: you can begin treatment the same day!

At PRM, our mission is to decrease the time patients are suffering from pelvic pain symptoms.


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Hello, I'm Dr. Rachael Haverland and I'm answering questions. Today our question from you is, how often is endometriosis identified outside of the pelvis? And we call this extra pelvic disease. And it's actually very common, more common than you might think. It's just very important for your surgeon to be able to look for it and identify it.

So areas that endometriosis has been found, there's case studies of it being found in the nose and the brain and the thoracic cavity around your lungs more commonly if it's found in the, in the thoracic cavity, more commonly on the right. But you can also have endometriosis has been found in the stomach, for example.

The abdominal wall, a lot of the times you can feel abdominal wall masses. This can be spread from c-sections from prior endometriosis laparoscopies. Sometimes it's spread without having surgery, but sometimes if it's on the abdominal wall, you can feel, you can feel a mass underneath the skin.

They may have cyclic bleeding from these areas as well. Our studies show that, maybe 12% up to 15% of endometriosis is found outside of the pelvis, but it's important to make sure that your surgeon knows how to identify it and more importantly, to look for it.

[annalaurenciamayer]

This is horrible
I just had 30 cm of my intestines removed because of crohn and they found out that I had endometriotic cells on my intestines that were taken out. Now I have to be under biology therapy for the rest of my life because of Crohn’s and have to start taking birth control without break for the rest of my life as well, so I would have less chance for endometriotic surgery in the future. My cylcles were pretty normal, it hurt for some hours but a pill always helped. And I just pit down birth control after 8 years so I could have a baby.

[katieamador]

I very clearly have all the signs and symptoms and am in EXTREME pain following my 2nd c section (I just got my first period like symptoms 4.5 months PP) I have a mass underneath my skin on bottom of stomach and EXTREME pain unlike anything I’ve experienced before. I’m going to call my doctor but I’m a bit concerned that she didn’t look further into it when she noticed the mass. Any advice?