Systematic evaluation of the influence of endometrial stimulation on pregnancy outcome in the patients with artificial insemination

Objective The association between endometrial stimulation and the intrauterine insemination outcome remains to be a controversial issue, for there being all kinds of conflicting data in the existing literatures. We conducted a Meta-analysis case to verify the relations between endometrial stimulation and intrauterine insemination (IUI). Methods The articles had been searched in the following online databases: MEDLINE, CNKI, VIP, Wan Fang, EMBASE and the Cochrane Library. All of the statistics quoted for our studies have been published in English or Chinese from Jan, 2000 to May, 2016. Among the 6 studies included in this Meta-analysis, all of them used a case - control design. All the 6 studies evaluated a total of 1349 participants, including 734 cases of endometrial injury. Results The results of the Meta-analysis showed that patients with endometrial stimulation were more likely to receive clinical pregnancy than those who did not. Compared with the control group, the clinical pregnancy rate of experiment group was higher (RR=0.88, 95% CI: 0.82-0.95, P=0.001), while the differences between their abortion rate (RR=0.72, 95% CI: 0.37-1.4, P=0.33) and multiple pregnancies rate (RR=0.78, 95% CI: 0.3-2.01, P=0.60) were insignificant. Conclusions Endometrial stimulation could help increase the pregnancy rate in IUI cycles, while the abortion rate and multiple pregnancies rate would not be raised. Key words: Artificial insemination; Endometrial stimulation; Pregnancy outcome; Randomized controlled trial