Publication:

Study of genital tuberculosis among infertile women at tertiary care centre

Background A hospital based descriptive clinical study to evaluate the incidence of genital tuberculosis among infertile women and to correlate presentational symptoms and methods of diagnosis.

Methods A descriptive clinical study, after taking consent a total of 52 patients were enrolled in the study. After evaluation of the couple with the help of history and examination, semen analysis was performed for the male partner. The female partner underwent complete (CBC), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), chest X-ray, hysterosalpingogram (HSG), endometrial biopsy in pre-menstrual phase. After this basic work-up, if semen analysis showed abnormalities those patients were excluded from the study. Mantoux test is done for every patient.

Results Total number of patients included was 52. Out of these 15.38% were diagnosed to have genital tuberculosis by the help of a set investigation including PCR which was gold standard and was taken in this study due to its accuracy.

Conclusions tuberculosis is still a common disease and must be considered in the differential diagnosis of patients with infertility. So, every woman attending an outpatient basis for infertility should be investigated by different investigative modalities to rule out the chance of genital tuberculosis and if present should be treated as early as possible.