Planning your stay
Surgery for endometriosis
If surgery is scheduled, it will be performed at the Tivoli-Ducos Clinic where you will also stay, the length of time depending on the type of surgery performed and your progress after surgery .
For more information about the Tivoli-Ducos Clinic, please visit the clinic’s website.
Before the operation
For patients who have surgery planned for 8:00 a.m., the hospital stay is scheduled the day before.
You will be asked to follow a no-residue diet for 3 to 5 days prior to the procedure.
For patients scheduled for digestive tract surgery (colon, rectum), a bowel preparation is requested the day before surgery.
The operation
On the day of the operation, you will be asked to take an antiseptic shower, to remove jewellery and nail polish, and to fast for several hours.
You will be accompanied to the operating room where the surgeon will meet you for a final interview before the surgery.
The surgical procedures performed in our center are performed in most cases by keyhole surgery, with or without robotic assistance. This involves making 4 or 5 incisions of varying size from 5 to 10 mm. Incisions of less than 5 cm in length can be made in certain situations, to extract organs that cannot be reduced in size inside the abdomen (such as in the case of rectal resection or nephrectomy).
After the procedure
After the procedure, you will spend one to two hours in the recovery room before returning to your room.
You can drink water a few hours later, and can have a light meal the night of the surgery. Depending on the type of surgery performed, we suggest that you get up for the first time on the evening of the surgery or at the latest the next morning.
Our center applies the principles of Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS).
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The urinary catheter is removed after you first get up. It is important to monitor how urination resumes, as surgery for deep endometriosis often involves a risk of urinary dysfunction due to the temporary paralysis (neuropraxia) of the splanchnic nerves that ensure the voluntary contraction of the bladder. For this reason, you must inform the nurses each time you wish to urinate, so that they can measure the volume of urine eliminated and what remains in the bladder, the latter is measured in bed using an ultrasound device.
Bowel movement first for gas and then for stools usually resumes the next morning. There is no special diet after surgery whatever the procedure performed.
In the case of surgery for severe endometriosis, and especially for colorectal surgery, special monitoring is required to identify the first signs of infection or digestive fistula. For this reason, blood samples are taken for several days (usually from the 3th to the 7th day after surgery) with white blood cell and C-reactive protein measurements.
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A rise in the levels of these two parameters occurs several hours before the appearance of the first clinical signs of a complication (fever, abdominal pain, cessation of transit), which allows us to carry out an abdominal CT scan and to rapidly perform new keyhole surgery and to treat the complication without any delay.
This approach based on close monitoring and reactivity during 7 days a week has allowed us to progressively reduce the use of stomas and so prevent complications from digestive fistula. Learn more
Staying in hospital
The length of time for a hospital stay can vary, generally lasting between 1 and 3 days after surgery.
During your stay in hospital, your gynecological surgeon will visit you every day, from Monday to Saturday, first to explain how the surgery went and then to make sure that your progressis going well. On Sundays and if your surgeon is absent, another Endometriosis Center surgeon will replace him/her each day. If your surgery is performed by a multidisciplinary team, the digestive and urological surgeons will also visit you every day to check on your recovery.
During your hospital stay, you will also meet our clinical research staff, who are responsible for managing the database used in our clinical research activity. They will collect the pre-surgical questionnaires and clarify any questions that are not clear to you. Please take the time to answer these questionnaires. These have enabled us to carry out a large number of clinical studies, for which our clinic is internationally renowned, and have provided important information concerning treatments for endometriosis and their immediate and long-term results.
We hope that your stay in our clinic will be a pleasant one, and above all beneficial to your health.
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