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Introduction: Endometriosis is one of the most common gynaecological diseases amongst women in reproductive age. The main clinical manifestations include pain and infertility, which can subsequently adversely affect the physical, mental and emotional well being and the overall quality of life of the woman. The aim of the presented review is to summarize the current knowledge about endometriosis with focus on epidemiology, risk factors, aetiology, diagnostics, classification, treatment and the effect on fertility and quality of life of women. Methodology: For a non-systematic literature review, the search was performed based on predefined keywords. The individual keywords were combined using Boolean operators. Foreign and Czech sources in the PubMed, EBSCO, UpToDate and Medvik databases were used. The search was not given a strict time limit and language limit. However, we focused mainly on articles from 2008 to December 2017 in English and Czech. Women with endometriosis was the only inclusion criterion. Results: A total of 55 sources were used to generate results, 2 of which are systematic reviews (10, 36), 3 guidelines (29, 32, 54), 7 prospective cohort studies (2, 4, 37, 38, 46, 53), 6 case studies and controls (3, 7, 11, 14, 34, 52), 7 cross-sectional studies (9, 13, 25, 39, 41, 47, 49), 18 references (8, 12, 15, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 33, 34, 40, 49, 51, 55), 4 series of case studies (18, 19, 44, 48) (grounded theory) (27) and 6 books (6, 21, 30, 31, 43, 45). Conclusion: Endometriosis is a common gynaecological disorder affecting women in reproductive age. It largely involves infertility and at the same time it affects women's psychological health and quality of life in many areas. Patients should be treated individually according to the prevailing symptoms. It is recommended that patients be sent to treatment centres, which offer more advanced care for endometriosis. At present, none of the therapy options at hand guarantees a full cure and recurrence of the disease is still high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]