Introduction
Endometriosis is an inflammatory disorder and defined as presence of
endometrial like tissue outside of the uterus and it’s estimated
prevalence is 10-15% in reproductive women.(1) It mainly induces
infertility and prevalence of endometriosis rises above 40% in
infertile women since endometriosis causes distortion of pelvic anatomy,
impaired peritoneal function, altered implantation and decreased ovarian
reserve. (2–6)
Treatment of endometriosis related infertility (ERI) is based on
surgery, assisted reproductive technology (ART) or both of them.
Assisted reproductive technologies may be ineffective in some cases with
ERI since the all these factors listed above make the treatment more
difficult. ICSI (intra cytoplasmic sperm injection) cycles frequently
are being cancelled because of inefficient ovarian response to
stimulation, low number or quality of collected oocytes(7),
fertilization arrest or maturation arrest. In a study reported by Kuroda
, it was found that cancellation rate of cycles (including cases of
empty follicle, degenerating and unfertilized egg) were 35.5% in
unoperated endometrioma, 47.1% in operated endometrioma, 40% in
endometriosis with no endometrioma and 14.8% in tubal factor
infertility.(8) Bongianni et. al. also found that cancellation rate was
7.5% in unoperated endometrioma, 9.8% in operated endometrioma and
2.9% in tubal factor infertility and commented as the cancellation
rates are higher in ERI.(9) The reason of these high cancellation rates
is still unclear. There is no study about whether which factors affect
the cancellation rate in ERI.
In this study we aimed to elucidate the factors affecting the
cancellation of cycle, depending on the phenotypes of endometriosis and
other characteristics of the cycles.