Patients' auto report of regularity of their menstrual cycles. Medical history is very reliable to predict ovulation. A cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVE: Infertility of ovulatory cause can account for a quarter of infertility etiologies and one of the questions in the patients' clinical history is about their self-perception of the regularity of their menstrual cycles. The aim of this study was to assess whether the information on menstrual regularity is consistent with the assessment of the presence or absence of ovulation. METHODS: Cross-sectional study. The inclusion criteria were: patients with infertility for at least one year, complete examination and ovulation monitoring, aged between 18 and 38 years completed. The patients were divided into two paired groups: those who reported regular menstrual cycles and those who reported irregular cycles. In the ultrasonographic monitoring of ovulation we separated those who ovulated from those who did not ovulate, and applied the Fischer's test. RESULTS: Among the 199 patients who reported having regular menstrual cycles, 113 had proven ovulation upon ultrasound monitoring and 86 patients did not ovulate. Among the 29 patients who reported irregular cycles, 24 did not ovulated at the cycle monitoring. The Fisher's exact test was applied and the p-value found was significant. CONCLUSION: The story of the patient in the clinical interview about the presence of regular or irregular menstruation correlates with the presence or absence of ovulation, it should be taken into consideration in the reasoning regarding the infertility etiology. This report would be important to guide the patient's ovulatory regularity diagnosis.

Low progesterone levels and ovulation by ultrasound assessment in infertile patients.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the correlation between low levels of progesterone and ovulation by ultrasound monitoring in infertile patients with regular menstrual cycles. METHODS: Case-control study. The sample consisted of 302 women aged 20-40 years, treated from 2000 to 2014 in the Human Reproduction Laboratory of the University Hospital of the Federal University of Goiás and in the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics in Goiânia, Goiás. Data collection was performed by analysis of physical records (Medical Records and Health Information Services) and electronic ones (Sisfert©, 2004) after approval by a Human Research Ethics Committee. Patients were classified according to their ovulatory status, evaluated by progesterone levels and ultrasound monitoring and divided into two groups: Group I (anovulatory cycle patients, n=74) and Group II (ovulatory patients, n=228). In both groups associations were made between the percentage of patients with normal progesterone (≥ 10 ng/ml) and percentage of patients with low progesterone (5.65 - 9.9 ng/ml). The groups were paired for comparisons related to age, body mass index, duration of infertility, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), luteinizing hormone (LH) and estradiol (E2). RESULTS: There was a significant association between the percentage of ovulation by ultrasound monitoring and the percentages of patients who presented low levels of progesterone. CONCLUSION: The study suggests that low serum levels of progesterone are associated with low percentage of ovulation in infertile women with regular menstrual cycles and women with unexplained infertility.

Obesity and anovulatory infertility: A review.

This global overweight and obesity epidemics has become one of the largest public health problem worldwide and is increasingly more common among women in reproductive age. Along with the prevalence of overweight women, there is an increase in women with anovulatory infertility. Thus, we carried out a bibliographic research in the PubMed, Lilacs and SciELO databases, using the combinations in Portuguese, Spanish and English of the following descriptors: "Body Mass Index", "obesity", "overweight", "female infertility" and "anovulation". The aim of this study was to assess the effects of obesity on the ovulatory profile of infertile women in the available literature.