Complete surgical removal of minimal and mild endometriosis improves outcome of subsequent IVF/ICSI treatment

Abstract Surgical eradication of minimal and mild endometriosis has been shown to increase the birth rate both spontaneously and after intrauterine insemination. This study from a reproductive medicine unit at a referral university hospital examined whether surgical eradication of minimal and mild endometriosis prior to IVF improved the treatment outcome. Records of infertile patients with minimal and mild endometriosis (American Society for Reproductive Medicine stages I and II) with no prior IVF/intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) treatments were analysed. During the first treatment cycle, women who had undergone complete removal ( n = 399) of endometriotic lesions experienced, compared with women with diagnostic laparoscopy only ( n = 262), a significantly improved implantation rate (30.9% versus 23.9%, P = 0.02), pregnancy rate (40.1% versus 29.4%, P = 0.004) and live-birth rate per ovum retrieval (27.7% versus 20.6%, P = 0.04). Surgical removal of minimal and mild endometriotic lesions also gave shorter time to first pregnancy and a higher cumulative pregnancy rate. The study shows that women with stages I and II endometriosis undergoing IVF/ICSI have significantly shorter time to pregnancy and higher live-birth rate if all visible endometriosis is completely eliminated at the time of diagnostic surgery. Surgical elimination of minimal and mild endometriosis has been shown to increase the birth rate both spontaneously and after intrauterine insemination. In this study from a reproductive medicine unit at a referral university hospital, we examined whether surgical elimination of minimal and mild endometriosis prior to IVF improved the outcome of this treatment as well. During the first IVF treatment cycle, women who had undergone complete surgical removal of endometriosis experienced, compared with women who still had their endometriosis, an improved rate of embryo implantation, pregnancy rate and live birth rate per ovum retrieval. Surgical removal of minimal and mild endometriotic lesions also gave shorter time to first pregnancy and a higher cumulative pregnancy rate. In summary, our study shows that women with minimal and mild endometriosis undergoing IVF have shorter time to pregnancy and higher live-birth rate if all visible endometriosis is completely eliminated before the start of treatment.