A Century-Old Procedure Offers New Hope

Does Flushing The Fallopian Tubes Increase Fertility?

Recently, infertility was brought into the spotlight throughout the medical community. Specifically, they were highlighting a century’s old procedure and the success rate experienced by couples trying to conceive around the world: flushing the fallopian tubes.

This is an old procedure that is over 100 years old. The technical name for this procedure is “Hysterosalpingography (HSG). The procedure involves flushing the fallopian tubes with iodized poppy seed oil and then undergoing an X-ray to get images of the uterus and fallopian tubes.

Sometimes the medical community gets lucky and stumbles upon new scientific discoveries, HSG is a great example of this. It was originally intended to be an imaging technique, but it turns out HSG might be making women more fertile!

In a study done in Canada, 1,119 infertile women underwent HSG treatment and 40% of the women who received HSG treatment with poppyseed oil fell pregnant within 6 months compared to 29% of women who received an HSG with water. That is a big difference in pregnancy rates between HSG poppyseed oil and HSG water treatment groups. The poppyseed oil group experienced a conception rate that was 11% higher than the water HSG treatment group.

Many of our patients at MTHFR Support and Fertility are using this procedure in combination with our preconception program with great success. You can read more about this procedure and the research at Medical News Today.