Infertility and spontaneous abortion
Definitions
- Infertility : absence of conception after 12 months of regular, unprotected intercourse (commonly used medical definition of infertility). Inability to conceive within two years of exposure to pregnancy is the epidemiological definition recommended by the World Health Organization.
- Primary infertility means that the couple has never conceived, despite regular unprotected intercourse for a period of 12 months.
- Secondary infertility means that the couple has previously conceived, but is subsequently unable to conceive despite regular unprotected intercourse for a period of 12 months. If the woman has breastfed a previous infant, then exposure to pregnancy is calculated from the end of lactational amenorrhea.
- Childlessness (demographic studies) : inability to bear any children, either due to the inability to conceive or the inability to carry a pregnancy to a live birth. Childlessness at the end of the reproductive years is most effectively studied by using women in the oldest age cohort: women 45 to 49 years.
- Infertility (demographic studies) : inability of a non-contracepting sexually active woman to have a livebirth. Demographers have shifted the endpoint from conceptions to live births because it is difficult to collect complete data about conceptions in population-based studies. In addition, demographic analyses of infertility are often based on secondary data from demographic surveys that contain complete birth histories, but no information about induced abortions, miscarriages and stillbirths. It is common in demographic studies to use a period of exposure of five years.
- Fecundability : the probability of conception per menstrual cycle or monthly probability of conception for a sexually active couple not using birth control.
- Pregnancy wastage is the term used when the couple is able to conceive, but unable to produce a live birth.
- Recurrent miscarriage (habitual abortion) is defined as the spontaneous termination of three or more pregnancies before the 20th week of gestation.
Edited by Aldo Campana,