'Listen to women': UK doctors issued with first guidance on endometriosis

Disease, which causes crippling pain and can lead to infertility, affects 176 million women worldwide and currently takes seven to eight years to diagnose

• Years of pain, but no diagnosis: one woman's experience of endometriosis

Doctors are being advised to listen to what women tell them about crippling pelvic and period pain and look out for the symptoms of endometriosis in a bid to speed up diagnosis of a disease that can wreck lives and careers.

It takes an average of seven to eight years to be diagnosed with endometriosis, according to the first-ever guidance on managing a disease that affects one in 10 women from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) in England. Experts say the long wait is the same all over the western world. Many women are told they are making a fuss about normal period pain. Some are unable to work and the disease causes others to become infertile.