ENDOMETRIOSIS: SAMPSON’S THEORY OF RETROGRADE MENSTRUATION

May 8th, 2009

Sampson stated that menstrual blood containing viable fragments of endometrial tissue—the lining of the uterus was “regurgitated” through the fallopian tubes into the abdominal cavity. Later laboratory experiments and observations of patients during abdominal surgery disclosed that most women have retrograde menstruation, but only a percentage will become victims of endometriosis.

Recent probes into the theory of retrograde menstruation reveal that a great percentage of women show an increased amount of blood in the pelvic cavity around menstruation and after ovulation. Blood has even been present in the dialysate (liquid drawn from the abdominal cavity) of women undergoing kidney dialysis while they had their periods. What this proves, again and again, is that retrograde menstruation it common.

Earlier experiments, specifically those performed in the 1950s, were more aggressive. One team—doctors R. B. Scott, R. W. TeLinde, and L. R. Wharton, Jr., of Chicago’s Northwestern Medical Centers-created pelvic endometriosis in rhesus monkeys by inducing retrograde menstruation in an extreme manner. Basically, what they did was cot into the monkey’s uterus, opening it so that menstrual blood spilled directly into the pelvic cavity instead of being washed out through the vagina. Six of the ten experimental monkeys developed endometriosis—some within two and a half months, whereas others had no signs of it for nearly three years. In 1958 a number of women voluntarily submitted to an experiment wherein doctors injected endometrial cells into a laparotomy incision. This experiment also produced endometriosis in most women,

Sampson’s theory has found a few detractors, but most doctors agree that the backward spraying of menstrual blood places endometrial tissue on vulnerable organs. Even Sampson postulated that in all probability there is “more than one” avenue available for the development and spread of this disease. One conclusion was that, he wrote, “the invasion and dissemination of endometrial tissue employ the same channels as the invasion of cancer.” This meant that fragments of endometrial tissue reached other parts of the body through channels such as the blood and lymph systems. The actual process of tissue transference from one organ to another by blood or lymph glands is known as metastasis.

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