[Incidence and pregnancy rates in various causes of sterility]

A precise diagnostic procedure could be done in 1,450 sterile couples in the years 1975 to 1982. The prevailing cause of sterility was female in 67 per cent, male in 22 per cent and both female and male in 11 per cent. Pregnancy rate over all was 35 per cent and after therapy 45 per cent. There was a distinct correlation between pregnancy rate, age of the patient and duration of desire for child. 73 per cent of all conceptions occurred in female sterility; 77 per cent of it in ovarian sterility. Simple therapeutic methods like gestagens or clomiphene and conversational therapy achieved the highest pregnancy rate. Only a little proportion of the pregnancy rate could be obtained by highly specialized measurements like FSH/HCG (7 per cent) or operative interventions (8 per cent). In cases of male reasons only 8 per cent of all pregnancies could be attained. 62 per cent of all pregnancies supervised were live births. Because highly specialized methods are not able to influence the rate of conceptions over all embryo transfer will be more and more the alternative method in cases of sterile couples treated without success till now.