Laparoscopic management of deep infiltrating colorectal endometriosis

Deep infiltrating endometriosis is a debilitating disease which usually affects young women and significantly impacts on the quality of life. Due to the fact that it remains a benign condition which usually affects patients at the reproductive age, an aggressive, radical surgical procedure might be considered as a too mutilating one by certain cases. In consequence, attention was focused on treating these patients in a less invasive manner, procedures like rectal shaving or full thickness local excision being proposed. In the meantime, once the minimally invasive techniques evolved, laparoscopic surgery has been widely proposed in the last decade in order to treat this pathology. The current paper is a literature review of the largest studies which investigated and compared the outcomes after minimally invasive approach for deep infiltrating colorectal endometriosis.