What is "infertility"?

What is "infertility"?

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...

Infertility, I think we all understand, is decreased ability to achieve conception as compared to the rest of the population. The medical definition happens to be a couple who is trying to get pregnant for a full year with unprotected intercourse; that is to say, without contraception, and still unsuccesful at the end of twelve months. In reality, within that population of those couples who have not conceived at the end of twelve months, is going to be two groups: 1) those who will get pregnant, those who are subfertile if you will, those who have a lower probability of getting pregnant in any one month, and 2) those who are really not going to achieve pregnancy without some kind of intervention. Let's say women with blocked fallopian tubes, men who have no sperm, women who are not ovulating. Any of those groups will need medical intervention, or their chances of getting pregnant is essentially zero. Our job as fertility specialist is to distinguish: is this a subfertile couple?, or is this really a couple that is going to need medical intervention?