Evaluation of the uterine causes of female infertility by ultrasound: A literature review

Various uterine disorders lead to infertility in women of reproductive ages. This study was performed to describe common uterine causes of infertility and sonographic evaluation of them for midwives.
To study the literatures, manuscripts published at “PubMed”, “Elsevier”, “Google Scholar”, “SID” and original text books, between 1985 and 2015, were carefully reviewed, using following keywords: infertility, uterus, ultrasound scan, transvaginalsonography, endometrial polyp, fibroma, leiomyoma, endometrial hyperplasia, intrauterine adhesion, Asherman’s syndrome, uterine synechiae, adenomyosis, congenital uterine anomalies, congenital uterine malformations.Several high-quality 2D/3D sonograms were used to illustrate uterine disorders which cause female infertility.
Total numbers of approximately 180 manuscripts were assessed. Of these, 44 articles were more related to our topic and were studied as suitable references. In addition, 11 published books on ultrasonography and infertility were evaluated to provide more precise knowledge on mentioned areas. As published at literatures,ultrasonography has a crucial role in the investigation and differentiation of uterine disorders inwomen with infertility. But, the diagnosis depends on the day of menstruation, clinical presentations and the suspected uterine disorder. In this review, we provided key notes about proper timing of the ultrasound examination.
Ultrasonography is the first step imaging modality in the investigation of female infertility and provides information for detecting uterine disorders. However, accurate diagnosis depends on the “time of evaluation”.Therefore, every midwife needs to learn about the “optimum timing” for ultrasound evaluation based on each patient.