What is Endometriosis

Endometriosis.org is the global platform which links all stake holders in endometriosis. It facilitates collaboration and information sharing between women with endometriosis, physicians, scientists, and others interested in the disease.  This international cooperation and exchange of experience enables us to deliver up to date, evidence based, information and news about endometriosis.

What are the symptoms of endometriosis?

Pain is one of the most common symptoms of endometriosis. Usually the pain is in the abdomen, lower back, and pelvis. The amount of pain a woman feels does not depend on how much endometriosis she has. Some women have no pain, even though their disease affects large areas. Other women with endometriosis have severe pain even though they have only a few small growths.

When a woman or a girl has decided that she wishes to discuss her symptoms with a physician, she may benefit from preparing for this consultation by using the aid, your first consultation, which highlights the questions a doctor may ask her. By assessing the responses, it will help her physician to evaluate her symptoms, and together they can decide the right treatment plan for her.Infertility and subfertility. Endometriosis may lead to fallopian tube obstruction. Even without this, there may be difficulty conceiving. In some women, subfertility is the sole symptom, and the endometriosis is only discovered after fertility investigations.

Risk factors

Rarely, a woman may be at increased risk because of a medical problem that prevents the normal passage of menstrual flow. In addition, there's some speculation that damage to cells that line the pelvis - caused by a previous infection - can lead to endometriosis.

The term endometriosis refers to a benign and common disease in which cells like the ones that line the inside of the womb are established outside the womb e.g. on the ligament supporting the uterus. in the ovaries, tubes, pelvis, bowels, bladder, etc. In patients with endometriosis, these cells, like the endometrium, respond to the monthly hormonal changes.

Age. Endometriosis can occur in women of all ages. It has been reported in girls as young as 8 (and has been documented before the onset of menstruation), and in women over 75, with the average age being between 25 and 29. Approximately 40% to 60% of women with endometriosis report symptoms before age 25.

Coelomic metaplasia

"Metaplasia" refers to the transformation of one kind of tissue into another. Coelomic metaplasia refers to cells that transform into endometrial cells, perhaps as a result of chronic inflammation or irritation from retrograde menstrual blood.

Endometriosis - Treatment

Although there is no cure for endometriosis, treatment can help with pain and infertility. Treatment depends on how severe your symptoms are and whether you have future pregnancy plans. For pain only, any hormone therapy that lowers your body's estrogen levels will shrink endometriosis implants and may reduce pain. To become pregnant, surgery, infertility treatment, or both may help.

Endometrial lesions (implants of endometrial tissue outside of the endometrium) can be cut away (excised) or burned away using a high-energy heat source, such as a laser (ablation). Treatment with laparoscopy is more difficult with advanced disease that involves large areas of the rectum or larger lesions.Hormone treatment is popular as an alternative to surgery; however, hormones are not proven to be effective in treating endometriosis but may help to prevent further growth of endometriosis. Many women have found symptom relief from combination therapy with estrogen and progesterone.