What factors can prevent me from becoming pregnant?

What factors can prevent me from becoming pregnant?

Richard Paulson (Chief, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, USC) gives expert video advice on: What factors can prevent me from becoming pregnant?; What are the leading causes of infertility among women?; What causes male infertility? and more...

We think of three basic factors as involved in human fertility which would be: the male factor on the one side, that'd be sperm and <a href="http://www.videojug.com/interview/male-infertility-2">male infertility</a>; and for women there are two separate factors; one of them is ovulation, or the presence of eggs, and then the uterus or the fallopian tubes, that is to say the transport to be able to get the egg and sperm to come together. If you look at the egg or the ovary side of the equation, then, if a woman has irregular menstrual cycles that would be a good indication that she is probably not ovulating. We think of ballerinas, we think of athletes who are runners, perhaps, who don't menstruate regularly - they typically do not ovulate. Women can also have premature ovarian failure or premature menopause, and those women also do not typically have regular menstrual cycles. On the uterus, or the fallopian side of the equation, there can be any number of things that can go wrong: the fallopian tubes can be blocked from prior pelvic surgery, for example, people don't think of appendicitis as being pelvic surgery but the appendix is very close to the fallopian tubes and if it's a complicated appendix case that can cause a blockage of the fallopian tubes. There's a simple x-ray that can be done to check whether the uterus or the fallopian tubes are open.