Anatomic distortion of clinically normal appearing fallopian tube: to what extent does it contribute to infertility?

We analyzed whether patent but anatomically deranged tubes were more commonly encountered in infertile women than in fertile women. The fertile group consisted of 100 women who were apparently normal with respect to fertility and the infertile group consisted of 100 infertile women with no certain etiology identified. The individual tubal structure was recorded at laparoscopy and the results of the two groups were then compared. Tubal pathology was found to be significantly higher in the infertile group; however, this marked difference arose from the contribution of a significantly higher frequency of peritubal pelvic adhesions because no difference was found between the two groups regarding anatomic variations of the fallopian tube. We conclude that tubal derangement which could only be identified with laparoscopy significantly contributes to infertility.