Endo/Laparoscopy Ladies come in...

slndr042305

Hi All -

I need to schedule a laparoscopy for endo and would love to have some recommendations from some of your ladies who have had laparoscopies in the No Va area, and were happy with your surgeon. Thanks so much!

NewlywedInNewYork

Hi - I am a lurker here (TTC). I have stage IV endo and spent months doing very deep research into doctors in this area. With endo, you can either get a traditional laparoscopy or excision surgery (also laparoscopic). You want to get excision surgery- it is the only thing that will get rid of it completely. A regular laparoscopy will NOT permanently get rid of the endo and it will come back. You may know all of this already (not sure) but I thought I'd share in case you are newly diagnosed. More and more doctors are starting to see this and doing excision surgery, but there are really only about 10-20 "true excision specialists" in the country. I know this sounds crazy.. I thought so at first too. Most do not take insurance. You should google the Center for Endometriosis Care in Atlanta and read up on excision on their website - they do a great job explaining everything. Anyway, we could not afford CEC because I have no out of network insurance coverage, but I found another person on DCUM who recommended an endo specialist within driving distance. His name is Dr. Patrick Yeung and he is at Duke University in NC. And.. he takes insurance!! I drove down to see him and thought he was fantastic, WORLDS better than the doctors up here. I had a traditional laparoscopy last summer with a doctor here and am going to wait 12 months just to see if I can get pregnant first (unlikely) before going back and having Dr. Yeung redo the job over the summer. Anyway, sorry for the long post, but I would definitely recommend looking into Dr. Yeung and bypassing the doctors in the DC area. Endo is not something to screw around with and you want to take it very seriously. Good luck!!

slndr042305

Thanks so much for the info, yes I am newly diagnosed, have a blocked left tube and have been TTC #1 for about 15 months now. I'll have to look into excision, my doctors only recommended traditional lap, but thats also probably because they don't do anything else for endo. And of course what I can get covered by my insurance. I'm not *wild* about my gyn practice in general and before I have anyone performing surgery on me I definitely wanted to get a few other opinions. I just want the horrible endo symptoms to get a little better and maybe have a shot at conceiving without IUI or IVF. Thanks so much!