What are the stages of endometriosis?

So endometriosis gets staged in different ways. Generally speaking, staging systems are not very helpful. The best known staging system was described by fertility doctors to describe the extent of endometriosis and its impact on fertility, and it was staged at stage one, two, three and four, with four being the most complex type of endometriosis and you would need IVF. One would be minimal disease and you wouldn't need fertility treatment, necessarily. That's broadly speaking, what that implied. But because endometriosis, the extent of disease doesn't correlate with symptoms outside of fertility, it's not a very useful staging system. Because my worry is that if you are told you have stage four endometriosis, that makes you a lot more concerned about your condition, when actually what matters [inaudible] you have symptoms or not. Because once you get to the menopause, again, endometriosis is going to shrink and go away and not cause any problems. It's a benign disease and it is not inevitable that you have endometriosis, that you'll have a fertility problem. In fact, most women with endometriosis have no difficulty conceiving at all.