Endometriosis and the risk of ectopic pregnancy: 10-year retrospective cohort study
Objective: Our primary objective is to give weight to the unanswered and recently heavily debated question, as to whether endometriosis is a statistically significant risk factor for ectopic pregnancy. Our study also provides information on the ethnicity, age and parity of each woman. We report the clinical presentation, the presence of other risk factors as well as intraoperative findings. Design: A retrospective cohort study. Settings: Whipps Cross University Hospital, Bart’s Health NHS Trust which is a district general University hospital in East London. Population: All women, over 10-year period (2005–2014), who were surgically treated for an ectopic pregnancy. Methods: In total, 800 patients were surgically managed. A total of 100 had incomplete data and were, therefore, excluded from analysis. The clinical details, demographics and operation notes were retrospectively analysed for 700 patients. Data were analysed using the student’s t test or chi-square analysis as appropriate. Results: In total, 37 women (5.3%) had endometriosis and 663 women (94.7%) had no evidence of endometriosis. Of the 37 patients, 24 had stage 1, 11 had stage 2 and 2 patients had stage 3 endometriosis. Conclusion: Our data support the theory that endometriosis is not a statistically significant occurrence in women with surgically managed ectopic pregnancy and is not risk factor for ectopic pregnancy.