Endometriosis is a frustrating condition. For many women it may take up to 10 years to receive a proper diagnosis. Sometimes, the diagnosis comes about because a couple has been struggling with unexplained infertility and after many years a health care
Endometriosis is a frustrating condition. For many women it may take up to 10 years to receive a proper diagnosis. Sometimes, the diagnosis comes about because a couple has been struggling with unexplained infertility and after many years a health care provider finally decides to look into endometriosis as an explanation. Endometriosis ranges from 5-15% of all cases of female factor infertility.
Endometriosis is difficult to find a targeted treatment that is going to work in everyone diagnosed with it because it is still unknown how the pathology comes about in the first place. Please check out my post on endometriosis for more information on the signs and symptoms of endometriosis.
For the remainder of this post, I want to highlight some of the ways endometriosis can impact fertility, and some possible approaches to increase chances of pregnancy.
“In women with endometriosis, there is a reduced monthly fecundity rate (2-10%) compared with fertile couples (15-20%). Although endometriosis impairs fertility, it does not usually completely prevent conception”
I wanted to highlight this statistic, yes the monthly pregnancy rates are lower in women with endometriosis then women with no known infertility, however what is important to take away from this stat is that women with endometriosis DO GET PREGNANT.
In women with mild or minimal endometriosis the following factors could potentially be contributing to infertility:
- Chronic inflammatory environment impacting gametes, embryo development, implantation
- Inflammation impact on healthy follicle development
- Increase of peritoneal macrophages resulting in destruction of sperm before fertilization can happen
- Decrease in endometrial receptivity due to the persistent local inflammation
In addition to the listed factors, moderate to severe endometriosis also have:
- Impairment of ovulation due to pelvic adhesions 