ROLE OF GENITAL TUBERCULOSIS IN SUB-FERTILE WOMEN

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate role of Acid fast bacilli culture (AFB) in sub-fertile women undergoing laparoscopy and dye test with endometrial biopsy. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted from 1st January 2020 to 30th April 2021, on 108 cases of subfertility, enrolled through non-probability consecutive sampling technique, for diagnostic laparoscopy & dye test with endometrial biopsy for AFB culture. We included all women of reproductive age with ≥2 years of subfertility, normal menstrual history, hormonal assay and normal male-factor. All women with comorbidities, women having contraindications for anaesthesia & couple with male-factor subfertility were excluded. Data analysis was done by SPSS version-20. RESULTS: Seventy-two (66.7%) women had primary and 36 (33.3%) had secondary subfertility. Duration of subfertility was >5 years in 63 (58.3%) cases. Ninety-seven (89.8%) patients had bilateral patent tubes. Majority of patients (n=46/108; 42.6%) were aging 32-38 years. Endometrial biopsy of 22 (20.4%) cases were positive for AFB culture. Out of AFB-positive cases, 17 (77.3%) had primary and 5 (22.7%) had secondary sub-fertility. All AFB-positive cases had patent tubes (unilateral n=5/22; bilateral n=17/22). Common laparoscopic findings were tortuous tubes (n=30; 27.8%) and clumped end fimbrial (n=24, 22.2%). CONCLUSION: In our study, endometrial sampling of 20.4% cases were positive for AFB culture. Although female genital tuberculosis constitutes a small proportion of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis, but it has an immense effect on fertility. Thus without challenging the superiority of laparoscopy, AFB culture could be considered a judicious part of subfertility workup in low resource countries carrying high burden of disease.