The original title that I was given when asked to write this article was “Recent advances in endometrial resection”. Whilst there have been a number of recent important publications regarding the results and place of endometrial resection, there have been no advances in the technique itself. There have however been a number of recent advances in other methods of endometrial ablation. I therefore changed the title so as to encompass all the advances in this area and I use the term endometrial ablation to cover all methods of resecting or destroying the endometrium.