Anxiety perceived by infertile women undergoing hysterosalpingography: An overview on current knowledge

Anxiety and stress are conditions that arise from the expectation of an uncontrollable threat and cause various emotional, motor, and physiological states in the body (such as increased heart rate). Anxiety is associated with a state of tension and excitement that leads to the experience of uncertainty, helplessness, readiness to respond to danger, and even avoidance of action by the individual. Studies show that anxiety also affects the perception of pain, and increased anxiety with higher stress intensity leads to a lower threshold for pain tolerance. Infertile women may experience a lot of anxiety and stress due to experiencing unfamiliar diagnostic and therapeutic procedures during infertility treatment. One of the stressful diagnostic procedures for infertile women is hysterosalpingography. Hysterosalpingography (HSG) is an important imaging method for investigating female infertility and diagnosing tubal and uterine lesions in them. This method is a minimally invasive and painful procedure that, due to its nature, the patient experiences severe pain and anxiety during the imaging. Anxiety and pain are confounding factors that reduce the patient's cooperation in the HSG procedure and sometimes affect the patient's decision to undergo other diagnostic and therapeutic methods for infertility. Our goal in writing this review article was to investigate the anxiety and perceived pain of infertile women undergoing hysterosalpingography in articles published so far, which we will discuss in detail in the full text of the article.

کلیدواژه ها:

anxiety ، pain ، infertility ، hysterosalpingography