PESHAWAR: Couple treatment for infertility is gaining currency as it facilitates correct diagnosis that leads to positive outcome, according to an expert.

“As a standard protocol, we need to hold counselling sessions with couples for infertility by subjecting them to investigations to ascertain the problem due to which they cannot produce children,” Dr Muzaffar Iqbal Tareen, clinical sexologist, told Dawn.

According to him, they have to dig out the causes of male infertility, female infertility or both before putting them on treatment.

Expert says educating people about the medical problem is important

“There are people with primary infertility who have been issueless since their marriage while those having secondary infertility have produced children previously but they have become infertile later,” he added.

Dr Muzaffar said that in both the cases, there were chances to cure the couples if they consulted right doctors to evaluate them properly.

“Male can have low sperm count, more abnormal or less active cell and suffer from problems including Azoospermia, a condition in which sperms aren’t formed or having obstruction problem due to which their sperms aren’t coming out,” he said.

The expert said that female with irregular menstruation cycle, ovarian cysts, blockade of fallopian tubes, pelvic inflammatory diseases or non formation of eggs or cysts in uterus suffered from infertility.

Dr Muzaffar, who wrote thesis on male infertility while specialising as clinical sexologist from Institute for Advanced Studies in Human Sexology, California, said that males needed semen analysis, hormonal profile and testicular ultrasounds while female should undergo relevant tests like ultrasound, egg formation and other investigations to get a clear picture about the fixation of the problem.

“In case, there is some abnormality in man while the woman is normal, then the focus remains only on the treatment of the former. If there is problem in woman, then she is treated in line with the investigations,” he said.

The field of sexology is not too old. It is practiced only in few states of America and Canada owing to which the people often blame women for infertility and they are sent to the doctors.

Nevertheless, medically the ratio of the problem among men and women is 60:40.

“The main issue remains lack of understanding on the part of the people. Understanding the problem is half treatment which gives us scientific evidence about the cause of infertility,” said Dr Muzaffar.

He said that in most cases, the treatment was possible through medication or assisted reproductive techniques, which had good results in issueless couples.

“In some cases, both male and female are normal but they couldn’t produce children due to natural causes,” he added.

He said that during the past few years, they examined over 150,000 people and 95 per cent of them didn’t know about the cause of their infertility because they had not been told by doctors, whom they visited. He added that some people had bundle of prescriptions from doctors with no success.

The expert said that a 50-year-old woman could be fertile and half of that could not be.

“It is God, who gives children. We want to clear misconceptions about fertility and impotency among people. Many men attribute their erectile dysfunction problem to psychological issues which isn’t correct. There are biological reasons, which need to be addressed,” he added.

DR Muzaffar said that many people did not know the specific days during which women got pregnant.

“In Pakistan, only we have got the penile Doppler through which males with erectile dysfunction are diagnosed and treated subsequently,” he added.

He said that so far, 48,000 patients were tested and more than half of them were treated successfully. He added that majority of them were below 27 years.

“The first intervention is to educate couple regarding the causes of infertility which is followed by investigation and treatment.

“Educating couple is important because people shouldn’t waste time and money if there are no chances of treatment,” said Dr Muzaffar.

Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2017