Flushed with success

Well, I read around a fair bit on medical topics, but I had never heard before of a fallopian tube flush as a fertility aid.  Not only that, it appears that using an oil based flush helps those eggs slip right through.  Sounds very mechanical!:

A technique that effectively “unblocks” a woman’s fallopian tubes by flushing them with liquid to help her conceive has been used for decades, with varying levels of success. Now a study has confirmed that the method significantly improves fertility, and that a certain type of fluid – one that is oil-based rather than water-based – shows strong results.

Published in The New England Journal of Medicine, our H2Oil study involved 1,119 women in 27 medical centres in The Netherlands. All women were younger than 38 and had been trying to conceive for 18 months on average.

The women were randomly allocated to receive either an oil- or water-based substance. Of those whose tubes were flushed with the oil-based substance, 40% achieved successful pregnancies within six months, compared to 29% among women receiving the water-based substance. This is a significant statistical difference.

Our results are an important gain for couples facing the diagnosis of infertility.