[Clinical study of effect of laparoscopic diagnosis and treatment on pelvic endometriosis-associated infertility]

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the role of laparoscopy in diagnosis and treatment of infertile women with endometriosis.

Methods: Totally 314 infertile cases were diagnosed as having endometriosis by laparoscopy, and 58, 173, 68 and 15 cases were assigned to stage I, II, III and IV groups respectively according to the revised classification American Fertility Society (r-AFS). Laparoscopic treatment included excision of ovarian endometriosis lesions, lysis of adhesions, endocoagulation of pelvic endometriosis lesions with controlled heating (100 degrees C) and lavaging of the peritoneal cavity. The duration of follow-up after laparoscopic surgery was censored at 36 weeks. Women who became pregnant were followed up to 20 weeks' gestation. The U and chi(2) tests were used to determine significance of difference in the rate of pregnancy and spontaneous abortion between all clinical stages.

Results: Of all the 314 cases, 254 became pregnant within 36 weeks after surgery. The cumulative numbers of pregnancy were 50 (86.2%, 50/58), 141 (81.5%, 141/173), 52 (76.5%, 52/68) and 11 (73.3%, 11/15) in stage I-IV groups respectively. The accumulative pregnancy rates were, however, not significantly different among stages I-IV (P > 0.05). The accumulative pregnancy rate within 24 weeks after surgery (93.7%, 238/254) was higher than that within 25 - 36 weeks after surgery (6.3%, 16/254). Of 254 cases who were pregnant, 12 had miscarriage. There was no significant difference of miscarriage rate between all stages (P > 0.05). While the rate of miscarriage was higher within 12 weeks of gestation (83.3%, 10/12) than that of after 12 weeks of gestation (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: Early lesions of endometriosis and pelvic factors for infertility can be found by laparoscopy. And pregnancy rate of endometriosis-associated infertility can be improved by laparoscopic surgery. To clean the menstrual blood pool and ablate peritoneal lesion with endocoagulation as completely as possible have significant importance for enhancement of fecundity in infertile women with endometriosis, especially for stage I-II cases.