A Survey on Infertility in Royan Institute

Infertility is defined as failure in pregnancy after one year of unprotected intercourse. Several centers have reported different causes of infertility. The most common causes of infertility are: male factor such as sperm disturbance, female factor such as ovulation dysfunction and tubal factor, both male and female factor, and unexplained infertility. The aim of this study was to survey the epidemiology of infertility in Royan institute. In this descriptive retrospective study, 2492 infertile couples were studied. These couples were selected by systematic sampling among couples referred to Royan institute between 1995 and 2001.All existing demographic data and diagnostic methods were recorded in questionnaires. Results were analyzed using SPSS version 11.5. In this study, the frequency of primary and secondary infertility was 90.1% and 9.9%, respectively. Among 2492 couples, 50.5% had male factor, 28.6% had female factor, 11.6% had both male and female factors and in 9.3% of couples, the cause of infertility was unknown. Results showed that 32.3% of men had normal spermogram, 23.6% of couples had azoospermia, and 40.3% had sperm disturbance including oligospermia, asthenospermia, oligoasthenospermia and teratospermia. 3.8% were not able to collect sample for semen analysis. Among women, different infertility factors included: ovarian factor (20.36%), tubal factor (12.64%), uterine factor (4.13%), endometriosis (1.28%) and recurrent abortion (0.68%). 50.48% of women were normal. Although male factor was the most common cause of infertility in Royan institute, we can not conclude that this factor is the most common cause of infertility in Iran since this center is considered referral especially for male infertility. We suggest performance of similar researches in other centers to evaluate the most common causes of infertility in Iran.