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| Ben Mol as a baby with his mother Annemie Mol-Albers,1965.Until he embarked on this study, Profesor Mol had no idea that he himself was a result of a successful pregnancy following this medical procedure | Credit: Professor Ben Mol, University of Adelaide |
"Infertile couples have a major opportunity to achieve a successful pregnancy without the need for IVF, thanks to new research into a 100-year-old medical technique.
The now lesser known technique - which involves flushing the woman's fallopian tubes with an iodised poppy seed oil - has been proven to have significant benefits for fertility, according to the largest study undertaken by a team involving researchers in the Netherlands and Australia.
The results of the study will be published in The New England Journal of Medicine. They will also be presented at the 13th World Congress on Endometriosis in Vancouver, Canada, by project leader Professor Ben Mol, from the University of Adelaide's Robinson Research Institute, and a member of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute's Healthy Mothers, Babies and Children theme.
Known as the H2Oil study, the project compared the benefits of flushing the fallopian tubes with either an oil-based or water-based solution in 1119 women. With Professor Mol, this work was conducted by Dr Kim Dreyer and Dr Velja Mijatovic from the Department of Reproductive Medicine, VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, and a research team from 27 medical centres in the Netherlands.
100-year-old technique
The procedure, known as hysterosalpingography (HSG), is a dye test of the fallopian tubes conducted under X-ray. The procedure was first carried out in 1917, and since the 1950s both water-based and oil-based solutions have been used..."
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