VIDEO: Emerging data suggests treating endometriosis improves fertility treatment outcomes

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As an infertility physician, I see endometriosis in a lot of my patients who are having difficulty getting pregnant. And there’s more emerging data that suggests that by treating endometriosis, it improves your fertility treatment outcomes. The question is why? And I think there’s at least two or three reasons, probably more, and one is that endometriosis can block your fallopian tubes, and if that happens to be the case, then obviously, the egg cannot get into the uterus. So that’s one reason people can get infertility. A second more common reason I think is the inflammation of the pelvis. Since this is an irritating disease and causes pelvic pain, there’s chronic inflammation, which is not a hospital environment for embryo implantation. And so, patients can have difficulty getting pregnant. A third reason is a form of endometriosis called adenomyosis is when the disease actually invades the muscle of the uterus and makes implantation difficult, causes irregular bleeding, and the lining doesn’t allow implantation to occur. So, there’s these various causes for infertility.

There are several studies that show that when you operate on somebody or treat them for endometriosis prior to them getting pregnant, it improves their likelihood of getting pregnant. The numbers are all over. So, I’m not going to quote any numbers. Some people say it’s really high, some people say it’s modest. But I think just from my own patient population, I have seen quite a few numbers of patients, who following surgery or treatment, did get pregnant. Several on their own once we treated the endometriosis. I’ve had patients that decided to have surgery and then think about fertility care, but after surgery, they got spontaneously pregnant. So, I think there’s a real benefit there by treating this disease.