Letter to the editor: recurrent symptoms of gastrointestinal tract caused by isolated endometriosis in a middle-aged female

Dear Editor: Endometriosis is defined as the presence of endometrial-like tissue outside the uterine cavity. Of all the cases of endometriosis, intestinal endometriosis accounting for about 10 %, the rectum and sigmoid colon are the most vulnerable position of the intestinal tract. For doctors, the diagnosis of colorectal endometriosis is difficult, especially the differential diagnosis between this disease and other diseases such as malignancies, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, ileal Crohn’s disease, and so on, due to its unspecific symptoms. Today, a large number of these cases are found accidentally at surgery and confirmed by pathology. Here, we describe a case which has not a definite preoperative diagnosis, but the histopathological examination of the resected specimen showed ileocecal endometriosis infiltrating the external muscular layer and two of the nine lymph nodes.