How to Find an Endometriosis Specialist: Choosing the Right Surgeon

Updated October 2026

By Dr. Melissa McHale, MD, FACOG · Reviewed by Dr. Victoria Vargas, MD, MS, FACOG

Finding an endometriosis specialist who can thoroughly perform your excision surgery can be difficult and overwhelming. Physicians, including OB-GYNs, may treat endometriosis without having extensive experience operating on complex disease, and a doctor's credentials alone don’t tell you everything you'd want to know before trusting them with your care.

We created this guide to help you investigate a potential endometriosis surgeon before your consultation, know what to ask when you meet and pay attention to how they approach your individual case.

What is an endometriosis specialist?

Choosing an endometriosis specialist for your surgical care can feel extremely overwhelming. Many different factors impact who the right surgeon is for your case: training, skill, multi-disciplinary care, understanding your values, cost, location, and any number of other priorities are weighed when choosing the surgeon who is right for you.

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1. Start with the surgeon’s training

Most importantly, ask how they learned to perform endometriosis surgery. Who trained or mentored them? Write down the name. Then learn about that person, too. Would you trust their mentor to perform your surgery? Would you have surgery at the program where they trained? If not, what specifically qualifies this surgeon?

Other questions to investigate:

• Do they perform excision of endometriosis?
• How many endometriosis surgeries do they perform each year?
• What is their re-operation rate?
• What complication rate do they report?

Every surgeon has complications, and they should be willing to discuss them openly. A complication rate around 10% is high. A claimed complication rate of less than 1% should make you skeptical and prompt you to ask much more detailed questions about what they count as a complication and how they track their outcomes.

2. Find out who could actually be involved in your surgery

Don’t investigate only the physician whose name appears on the website.

Who might actually operate on you? Look at the physicians in the practice and their training and licenses. Check state medical-board records and other publicly available information.

Patients may also choose to search a surgeon’s name alongside terms such as malpractice or lawsuit, while remembering that a search result alone doesn’t establish whether a physician provided inappropriate care.

3. Understand the practice behind the surgeon

Your surgeon does not practice in a vacuum. Find out who employs them and who ultimately owns the organization providing your care. Do they work for a hospital? Is it nonprofit or for-profit? Does that hospital have a history of unexpected billing or aggressive collections? Do they work for a larger physician company? Is that company owned or funded by private equity?

If the organization has an unfamiliar corporate name, search that name along with terms such as private equity, acquisition, or PitchBook. Financial structure does not automatically tell you whether a surgeon is good or bad. But if ownership and financial incentives matter to you, you should know who is behind the practice before choosing where to have surgery.

4. Look at their professional track record

One useful question is: Who else trusts this surgeon?

Do other physicians refer patients to them? Do other surgeons operate with them? Do they have established relationships with specialists who may be necessary in complex endometriosis cases?

For suspected bowel, bladder or urinary-tract involvement, for example, ask how those cases are planned and which specialists the surgeon works with.

5. Read reviews differently

Don’t simply count stars.

Read what patients actually describe and be sure their reviews are about the actual surgery and post-operative care, not general frustrations or complaints after having their surgery at a different practice.

A negative review about parking or a policy at a hospital where the physician no longer works may tell you relatively little about surgical expertise. Conversely, a glowing review describing an unexpected finding that required another surgery because the necessary expertise wasn’t available can raise an important question about pre-operative planning.

Surprises can occur in surgery. The question is how a surgeon anticipates reasonably foreseeable possibilities and prepares for them.

Look across multiple sources rather than relying on one review platform.

Also look for interviews, podcasts, educational videos and other content from the surgeon. Do they communicate in a way that makes you comfortable trusting them with highly personal decisions about your health?

6. Then meet the endometriosis specialist

Once you’ve done your research, the consultation gives you a different kind of information.

Don’t focus only on getting the “right” answer to a checklist of questions. Pay attention to how the surgeon answers them.

Suppose you ask:

“What are the chances I will need an ostomy?”

There’s an enormous difference between:

“You won’t need one" and a surgeon explaining when an ostomy could become necessary, what your imaging and symptoms suggest about your individual risk, how often they encounter that situation and how they would manage it.

The second answer doesn’t necessarily tell you what you want to hear. It tells you why the surgeon believes what they’re telling you.

Look for answers that are informative, candid and specific to your case.

7. Pay attention to how they prepare for surgery

Did the surgeon take enough time to understand your symptoms?

They MUST do pre-operative imaging, including MRI or ultrasound, before they operate on you and they MUST review it themselves. What type of imaging and protocols do they use in their surgical planning? Does the surgeon personally review the images or discuss the findings with you?

A routine pelvic ultrasound is not the same as an endometriosis mapping ultrasound. At Washington Endometriosis and Complex Surgery (WECS), we perform dynamic ultrasound mapping using the International Deep Endometriosis Analysis (IDEA) protocol⁠ and MUSA criteria to evaluate for signs of deep endometriosis involving areas such as the bowel, bladder, ureters and posterior cul-de-sac. This specialized examination evaluates both pelvic anatomy and how structures move in relation to one another, helping our surgeons identify disease that may affect surgical planning.

8. Ask what happens if another specialist is needed

If bowel involvement is possible, ask:

Who would perform a bowel resection if I needed one?

If urinary-tract involvement is suspected:

Who would be involved if surgery on my ureter or bladder became necessary?

You’re looking for more than “we can call someone.”

Ask whether the surgeon has established relationships with those specialists, such as my partner, bowel endometriosis specialist Dr. Vincent Obias, and experience operating together on complex endometriosis cases.

9. Ask what happens after surgery

Choosing an endometriosis surgeon isn’t only about the operation.

Ask:

• What does follow-up look like?
• Who manages problems that arise after surgery?
• What happens if pain persists?
• Does the practice work with other specialists when additional treatment is needed?
• If you’re traveling for surgery, how will postoperative concerns be handled once you’re home?

10. Finally, ask yourself one question

Do I feel like I’m part of a team with this surgeon?

Expertise and preparation matter. So does whether your surgeon listens, communicates uncertainty honestly, takes your priorities seriously and gives you confidence that there is a thoughtful plan for your individual case.

For more information on how to choose a surgeon, listen to Dr. McHale’s podcast appearance on Endo Battery, where she talks through different factors that might impact your decision making.

Vetting Endometriosis Surgeons Like The CIA: Don’t Get Bamboozled by a Medical Madoff: With Dr. Melissa McHale

Click Download PDF to access our worksheet designed to guide patients with endometriosis in evaluating and choosing the right surgeon.

Dr. Melissa McHale is a fellowship-trained minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon, endometriosis specialist, and co-founder of Washington Endometriosis and Complex Surgery.