Endometriosis and infertility

Hyun Jin Kim, Sung Hoon Kim
In: Journal of the Korean Medical Association · 2019 · vol. 62(10) , pp. 519 · doi:10.5124/jkma.2019.62.10.519 · W2980936721
article OA: gold CC0
🔓 Open OA copy View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Endometriosis is associated with infertility due to pelvic distortion, endocrine changes, and poor oocyte quality, with surgery showing improved pregnancy rates in mild cases but potential ovarian injury.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This review discusses the association between endometriosis and infertility, outlining proposed mechanisms such as distorted pelvic anatomy from adhesions, altered endocrine/ovarian function, impaired uterine implantation, and poorer oocyte/embryo quality. It reports that medical therapies have limited efficacy and lack evidence for improving fertility, while surgical treatment can improve ongoing pregnancy rates in minimal-to-mild endometriosis but may cause inevitable ovarian injury in women with ovarian endometriomas. A key caveat is that clear causality has not been proven, so the relationship remains correlational with multiple contributing pathways. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — specifically how endometriosis contributes to infertility and how medical versus surgical management relates to fertility outcomes.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects 10% to 15% of all women of reproductive age. Several studies show an association between endometriosis and infertility; however, clear causality remains unproven. The association between endometriosis and infertility is attributable to distorted pelvic anatomy secondary to adhesions, altered endocrine and ovarian function, impaired uterine implantation, and poor quality of oocytes/embryos. Medical treatment shows limited efficacy, without any evidence to support its role in improving fertility. Surgical treatment can improve ongoing pregnancy rates in minimal-to-mild endometriosis, although this approach may cause inevitable ovarian injury in women with ovarian endometrioma. Tailored treatment should be used in women with infertility and endometriosis. Age, ovarian reserve, a history of ovarian surgery, and bilateral endometriomas are important factors that should be carefully considered in these cases.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosisendometriomainfertility

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (38)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK