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DR. HADDAD: What we look for in the workup of the female patient is whether the tubes are open and we do various tests to see if the tubes are open, and therefore, the sperm can swim up through the female reproductive tract to reach the egg; whether the ovaries are producing follicles and, therefore, an egg on their own; or whether the ovaries can produce any eggs at all. The workup is directed towards these various causes.

To identify if the tubes are open or closed, there are different tests that we can do. One of the most commonly performed tests is called an HSG, or a hysterosalpingogram. And what we do with this test is we inject some dye inside the uterus and it goes out the tubes and then we shoot an x-ray. If the tubes are open, we see the dye coming out from the ends of the tubes.

Another, more invasive test that we can do to identify whether the tubes are open is laparoscopy where we basically take a camera—and we take the patient to the operating room to do that—and we’ll look inside her abdomen. We’ll look at the pelvis and we visually see if the tubes are open by injecting dye and visually seeing the dye coming up from the tubes.

As far working up ovulation, there are different tests that we can do. For example, checking what we call a progesterone level or doing urine LH kits, or even ultrasound monitoring of the ovaries to see if they are producing an egg on their own.