Abstract
Infertility is now recognized as a public health issue in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the prevalence rate of infertility is estimated to be more than 2.2% of the population, affecting about 30,000 couples. Infertility is affected by many different socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental factors, the latter playing a major role in infertility. The most cost effective of solving the infertility problem is prevention and education. The maternity nurse working in maternity filed or other agencies should be sensitive to the previous issue and share in health education program, through planning and implementation. The objective of the study were to assess of environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic factors through to affect human fertility among couples attending in-vitro fertilization clinics in three hospitals in Riyadh city (King Saud Medical Complex, King Fahad Medical City, and a private hospital). The study population consisted of Saudi couples coming for IVF process, all the patients participated voluntarily and shared in this study after signing a consent agreement. The instrument was adapted by the researchers of the Sher institution for reproductive medicine in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States of America in June 2006 and modified accordingly to the situation. A pilot Study was conducted to evaluate the tool. The data was collected over a period of nearly 3 months; starting from February 1st till the end of April 2010. It was carried out five days a week. Each couple was interviewed by subjects were assured that all the information gathered will be kept confidential. The age of the women on the study was between 26 and 30 years, the mean years of marriage was 4-7 years and most of them were housewives. 51.5% of the female study subjects suffered with dysmenorrhia while 37.7% had pain during sexual intercourse, the two previous complain maybe due to ovulation disorders. 9.8% of the women had polycystic ovary syndrome, and it was found that 8.2% and 4.9% suffered from hypothyroidism and prolactinemia respectively. 32.8% of the wives and 34.4% of husbands practiced some sort of exercise such as walking, while 19.7% of both, the wives and husbands used dyes to change their hair color, a factor that may cause infertility. None of the women sample smoked while 75.4% of the male sample was heavy smokers, and half of them (47.86%) smoke more than 3 packs per day. The study also reflected that 93.4% of the infertile husbands preferred to use the hot tube for more than 30 minutes every week, and 86.9% of the husbands work required long standing in hot weather and their official attire was made of material such as light jeans. Therefore the role of the nurse in infertility has evolved into a very specialized filed, the maternity nurse must also be involved in the preconception unit, preparing and delivering health education programs about weight, nutrition, smoking, drug abuse and recreational drug, occupational stress prevention programs and stress management is needed. [Tahani Bin Aoun and Salma Moawed. Effects of Environmental, Cultural, and Socioeconomic Factors on Saudi Infertile Couple in Riyadh City. Life Sci J 2012; 9(4):4861-4868] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 731