Infertility: from Rome the invitation to find out why

Couple fertility check-up: this is the proposal of an assisted reproduction center in Rome. From 1st to 12th March, on the occasion of Women's Day, it will be possible to carry out a couple's fertility check in just one hour and at a reduced cost compared to the normal rates. The tests will include a spermiogram, a transvaginal pelvic ultrasound and hormone dosages. The World Health Organization defines infertility as failure to conceive after 12 months of free, unprotected intercourse. In industrialized countries, including Italy, the concept of couple sterility is becoming increasingly popular, rather than a pathology of the man or woman considered individually. This problem affects between 15 and 20 percent of couples, for a total of about 120,000 Italians who, every year, find themselves facing difficulties in conceiving. The reasons for this situation are to be found in the environment (chemical substances, pollution, smoke) and in food habits, in the transmission of infectious diseases by sexual route, in psycho-emotional factors and in social conditioning which make women plan to having children at an older age than in previous generations. If in 40-50 percent of cases the lack of pregnancies is due to a male problem, in 10-15 percent of couples sterility is of the idiopathic type, i.e. without a certain cause. In any case, only through the appropriate diagnostic investigations is it possible to trace the reasons for the inability to procreate. Discovering these reasons is important not only to know at what level to intervene in order to try to favor conception, but also to access, possibly, assisted fertilization; in fact, according to the Italian legislation (law 40 of 19 February 2004) it is possible to carry out a test-tube fertilization only if the sterility or infertility of the couple is documented and cannot be resolved with other therapies. Spermiogram, ultrasound and hormonal dosages are part of these indispensable tests: through the first it is possible to carry out an evaluation of the seminal fluid, while the ultrasound allows to observe the ovarian oocyte reserve, two important parameters to understand what the problem from which they originate could be difficulties in conception. For women, the only precaution necessary is to be within the second-fourth day of the menstrual cycle, while the spermiogram must be performed after 2-7 days of abstinence. Source