Assessment of Impact of Infertility & its Treatment on Quality of Life of Infertile Couples using Fertility Quality of Life Questionnaire

BACKGROUND: With rising trends of infertility in India, it is no longer just a medical concern, but is rapidly becoming a public health issue due to its social and interpersonal ramifications. Limited data is available regarding quality of life of the infertile couples. AIM: The aim of this study was to understand the quality of life (QOL) of Indian infertile couples using the fertility QOL (FertiQoL) tool and to find the correlation between the values of the core and treatment FertiQoL and various sociodemographic and clinical factors. STUDY SETTING AND DESIGN: This cross-sectional study was conducted at fertility clinic at an urban tertiary care center. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Over a period of 12 months, 274 completed questionnaires obtained from 137 couples were selected for the analysis. Demographic and clinical characteristics of all the patients were recorded. Data analysis was performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software version 25:0. IBM Chicago, USA. RESULTS: Women had worse QOL than their male partners. They scored lower than men on emotional and mind body subscales. Women showed positive and uniform trend in mean scores of all core FertiQoL subscales with age and education. Rural population had poorer QOL. Patients with primary infertility had poorer QOL except in the relational domain. Couples, in whom both partners had some pathology, had the worse QOL compared to female factor, male factor or unexplained infertility. CONCLUSION: Our study is a step in the direction to establish the baseline QOL objectively in Indian couples with infertility.