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Hum. Reprod. Advance Access published online on September 18, 2006
Human Reproduction, doi:10.1093/humrep/del123
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Received February 16, 2006
Revised March 15, 2006
Accepted March 24, 2006

Opinion

Multi-disciplinary centres/networks of excellence for endometriosis management and research: a proposal

T. D’Hooghe 1 * * and L. Hummelshoj 2

1 Leuven University Fertility Center, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, UZ Gasthuisberg, Belgium
2 Endometriosis.org, London, UK

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
T. D’Hooghe, E-mail: thomas.dhooghe{at}uz.kuleuven.ac.be


  Abstract

Centres/networks of excellence are the only way forward to ensure that women with endometriosis receive consistent, evidence-based care, ensuring excellence, continuity of care, multi-disciplinarity, research, training and cost-effectiveness. Clinical excellence should be achieved by proper training, adherence to evidence-based guidelines, quality management and continuous measurement of patient outcome as a central focus. To ensure continuity of care, the first step is to assign to each patient a central gynaecologist who must have continuously updated knowledge regarding all diagnostic and management options for endometriosis and who must set priorities and realistic expectations together with the woman using a long-term multi-disciplinary treatment plan. Scientific research within and scientific collaboration between centres/networks of excellence will create the critical mass of patients and tissue samples that is needed to make progress. Centres/networks of excellence should be accredited as training centres by professional bodies. They should aim at improving the cost-effectiveness of the management of endometriosis by a reduction in the time to diagnosis, a reduction in the time before individualized specialist care is invoked, a reduction of expensive hit-and-miss treatments and a reduction in expensive fertility treatments, if the disease is under control before fertility is impaired.

Keywords: centre/endometriosis/excellence/multi-disciplinary/quality.

*These authors contributed equally to the work.


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