The diagnostic and therapeutic potential of the postcoital test.

An analysis was made of postcoital tests carried out on 423 couples attending the Rotunda and St. James Hospitals in Dublin. Initially 66.6% of tests were abnormal, but 21.3% of these were invalid because of the presence of seminal or cervical abnormalities, leaving 57.7% of couples with initially valid negative tests. Retesting showed 30.3% of couples to have persistently negative tests, 24.5% of whom achieved pregnancy. Three per cent of abnormalities were immunologic in origin. The most common cause why a subsequently positive test was initially negative was failure to observe correct clinical procedures, but unadmitted psychosexual problems were present in 17.6% of cases. Of the best postcoital tests, 78.5% correlated well with semen analyses and 90.9% with basal body temperature charts. In total, 6.2% of all pregnancies achieved in the clinics followed postcoital testing.