The women were informed of the operative intervention afterward. The extent to which this knowledge could have influenced their outlook and behavior affecting fertility, such as frequency of intercourse, was not addressed. Nevertheless, the fertility rate during the 36 weeks of follow-up was higher in the women who had ablation or resection than in those who received no operative treatment. About 10 percent of the women in each group received fertility drugs or other hormones or underwent in vitro fertilization after laparoscopy. The study end point was a pregnancy that reached 20 weeks' gestation, rather than a live birth or true fecundity, and the life-table fertility curves suggest there might have been an enduring significant difference had the study been carried out for longer than 36 weeks.
Medical therapy is available for the treatment of women with endometriosis.
Many women obtain relief from pain, but the results with respect to improved fertility are mixed. Estrogen stimulates the growth of endometrial tissue, and therapy that suppresses estrogen synthesis results in atrophy of ectopic endometrial implants. Gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists are a newer treatment. Like estrogen-progestin and danazol, these agonists reversibly inhibit ovarian function, and do it more reliably, and therefore improve the appearance of endometriotic implants. Approximately 90 percent of women with unstaged endometriosis treated with these agonists have relief of pain, and 50 percent become pregnant.