endometriosis

by Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, Jan. 25, 2010

It took you years to figure out that your painful periods were the result of endometriosis, a disease that affects more than 7 million women worldwide, according to the Endomentriosis Association. Now all you want to know is how it will affect your chances of getting pregnant. An enigmatic disease that involves the abnormal growth outside the uterus of tissues found normally inside the uterus, sufferers generally experience severe pelvic pain, irregular bleeding, and infertility. Although there is no “cure” for endometriosis, treatment usually involves surgery, pain medication, and hormone therapy.

Now there is a way better to understand how you can manage the disease and your fertility. Doctors at Fertility Physicians of Northern California in Palo Alto, have developed a new system for determining the stage of the disease, the best course of treatment, and a better way to predicting your chances of getting pregnant in any given month.
Created by data collected from 801 patients diagnosed with the disease, the doctors developed the Endometriosis Fertility Index (EFI) using statistical analysis and mathematical modeling in order to create a common language for understanding how the disease affects individual women.