Women with tubal factor infertility may be defined as women who have either damaged/occluded fallopian tubes or have history of salpingectomy. The fallopian tube plays an essential role in gamete and zygote transport. In parellel with the endomerium, the fallopian tube also undergoes cyclical changes in response to the steroid hormones oestradiol and progesterone, which alter morphology and the frequency of beating of the ciliary. Tubal disease resulting in infertility is the result of an inflammatory process in or around the fallopian tube. The extent of tubal damage is dependent on the severity and duration of the infection. The disease spectrum ranges from complete tubal occlusion with hydrosalpinx to mild intraluminal adhensions.
 

Symptoms
 

1. Dysmenorrhea: congestive dysmenorrhea caused by pelvic congestion. Usually patient will start to feel the pain one week before menstruation and it get more and more intense.
 

2. Abdominal discomfort: different extent of implicit pain in the lower abdomen, aggravated often due to fatigue. Some patient may even feel pain in urination or increased frequency of urination because of pelvic adhesions.
 

3. Irregular menstruation: fallopian tube is connected to ovaries. Usually tubal diseases do not affect the function of ovaries, but when infection goes upper, it will do some harm to ovaries.
 

4. Others: increase of the amount of vaginal discharge, pain during intercourse, gastrointestinal dysfunction, fatigue, mental depression.
 

Treatment of tubal factor infertility
 

There are many methods for treatment of tubal infertility. For example,certain curative effect for tubal infertility has been obtained by traditional hydrotubation and hysteron-salpingography(HSG). Based on hydrotubation and HSG,the interventional therapy was developed,such as selective salpingography(SSG),fallopian tube recanalization(FTR),endoscopic combined interventional therapy,and surgical treatment. Some of them were combined with the traditional Chinese medicine and physical therapy.