The Needs of Infertile Couples after Unsuccessful Treatment with Assisted Reproductive Technologies: A Systematic Review of Literature

Infertility is recognized as one of the major medical problems in the world. Infertility treatment is a complex, long, and stressful process, and may lead to unsuccessful treatment. It seems necessary to follow up the patients after unsuccessful treatment, to identify their needs and desires, and to provide health services for their health promotion. Therefore, this systematic review was conducted to investigate the needs and preferences of infertile couples after unsuccessful treatment with assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs).

In this systematic review, searching was performed without time restrictions in PubMed, Scopus, the Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, Web of Science databeses, as well as Google Scholar search engine, and Iranian databases including Magiran, Scientific Information Database (SID), Iranpsych, Clinical key, and Iranmedex. Keywords included infertility treatment, assisted reproductive techniques, needs, expectations, unsuccessful treatmen,t and their equivalent words. The relevant articles were retrieved from English and Persian databases. The articles were independently evaluated by two researchers, and disagreements were discussed with the third author.

24 eligible studies (16 cross-sectional and 8 cohort studies), published between the years 1980 and 2019, were included in the study. The needs expressed by infertile patients in these studies includes educational-informational needs, the need to psychological counseling, supportive needs, men's special needs, the need to strategies for stress management, the need for couples counseling, and the need for receiving respect and empathy from health care staff.

Infertile couples' needs included a wide spectrum of needs including educational, psychological, supportive, and counseling needs as well as men's special needs. Recognition of this vulnerable group’s needs can help policymakers and programmers to plan and implement counseling services in fertility clinics. In such a way, the quality of health services in these clinics would be improved and infertile couples' needs would be met.