Acute intestinal obstruction caused by endometriosis mimicking sigmoid carcinoma

Endometriosis is a relatively frequent disease in fertile women. The intestine is involved in 12-37% of eases. Intestinal endometriosis is usually asymptomatic and complete obstruction of the bowel lumen occurs in less than 1% of cases. We report a case of endometriosis of the sigmoid, which caused complete intestinal obstruction and mimicked carcinoma of the sigmoid colon. This case demonstrates the difficulty of establishing an accurate pre- and peroperative diagnosis and the propensity of intestinal endometriosis to mimic colon cancer.