Introduction: Infertility is a major crisis in life which exerts a stress effect on both personal and interpersonal areas. The effect of consultation on infertility treatments and marital and sexual functioning and health related quality of life is not well defined. The present study aimed to review the effects of consultation on infertility outcome.
Methods: This review has been conducted based on analysis of available literature indexed in MEDLINE and PubMed databases between 2015 and 2022. Specific keywords including “infertility” and “Consultation” have been used. Epidemiological, experimental and review articles on the mentioned theme were included.
Results: Accumulating evidence from studies suggests behavioral, cognitive and emotional consultation can decrease the negative aspects of infertility. Moreover, psychological consultation increased the life satisfaction in infertile women. One clinical trial revealed providing people undergoing in vitro fertilization with emotional and mental support will increase their chances of pregnancy and this kind of support will be helpful for patients if it is given in the form of midwifery consultation. However, findings from another study indicated that the collaborative infertility counseling did not improve treatment success.
Conclusion: As far as our study concerns findings suggest that still firm evidence does not exist to support that consultation could improve fertility outcomes. It seems there is need for multi-center studies with bigger sample size or even a collaborative study including samples from different countries to provide solid evidence for policy and practice.