Facts about Endometriosis
- Most women with endometriosis suffer pain, and present symptoms, up to a full decade prior to diagnosis
- Abdominal and bowel symptoms linked to endometriosis are commonly misdiagnosed as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
- Endometriosis is often misdiagnosed as Pelvic Congestion or Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID)
- Many infertile women with endometriosis experienced debilitating painful periods as teenagers but were misdiagnosed
- Many women suffer silently in pain associated with sexual intercourse
- No known cure and although endometriosis can be treated effectively with drugs, most treatments are unsuitable for long-term due to side-effects.
- Many cases of endometriosis can be successfully treated with Laparoscopic Excision Surgery. Hysterectomy should only ever be considered as a last resort.
- Although endometriosis is obviously a disease largely confined to the female population, interestingly, scattered case reports exist of lesions that are histologically indistinguishable from endometriosis found in men exposed to high-dose exogenous estrogens]
- Endometriosis is largely confined to women of reproductive age with an active hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis
- Pelvic endometriosis typically occurs in women aged 25-30 years. Extra pelvic manifestations of this disorder occur in woman aged 35-40 years.
- Women younger than 20 years with this disease often have anomalies of the reproductive system. Girls before their puberty do not seem to be at risk for this disease, although the number of reports of endometriosis in young women shortly after menarche is increasing.
- Even though endometriosis is associated strongly with infertility, not all women who have endometriosis are infertile