Infertility and female sexual dysfunction: A literature review

Abstract

Female sexuality and fertility have been increasingly studied during the past decades. Although infertility was always viewed as a medical condition and treated by doctors, female sexual dysfunction was thought to be a psychological disorder until the late 90s. As a result, it is not until the beginning of 20th century that literature largely indicated that women diagnosed with infertility are more likely to experience sexual dysfunction. Both entities seem to be munltidimensional and complex conditions. Consequently, their treatment needs to include investigation of all the related aspects, such as the psychological assesment of the couple. The aim of this study is to review the literature on the complex relationship between infertility, its treatment and sexual dysfunction and to investigate the necessity of assesment of sexual function in women facing infertility. Scientific research published in the english language was used. The search for suitable studies was conducted with the research databases PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus using the keywords: sexual dysfunction, infertility, infertile couple, female sexuality. Overall, these studies revealed that sexual satisfanction is strongly impaired by the consequences of infertility. Furthermore, sexuality and fertility share many organic and non-organic risk factors that need to be profoundly investigated in the future.