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Tubal Pregnancy Rupturing through the tubal wall Unruptured Tubal Pregnancy Distending the Fallopian Tube Fetus and Placenta into the Abdominal Cavity After Rupturing Through the Wall of the Fallopian Tube

The distal end of the fallopian tube is the fimbriated end that is represented by 2 in this picture. Eggs release from the ovary, number 1 in this picture. The most common places to get stuck are numbers 4 and 5. It usually takes an egg about 5 days to reach number 6 and then tumble into the uterine cavity if it is going to implant normally. 

Tubal Pregnancies Can Be Secondary To Chlamydia infections If your gyno calls and says that you have tested positive for the STD chlamydia (CT). First ask if you were tested for gonorrhea (GC) too, you probably were. Most gynos will treat you for both if you test positive for either GC or CT but it's important to know if you did have that test, because you need it as well if you have a chlamydia infection. Just two days ago the CDC published new gonorrhea treatment guidelines  . Both these infections need to be treated effectively to both prevent spread to sexual partners and because they both are important causes of pelvic pain, ectopic pregnancy and infertility in women. For the best gonorrhea treatment you may to have a shot of antibiotics, and for chlamydia often just a few pills will be enough to treat the infection. Because the treatments are so effective we don't need to test you right after the treatment, but in a few months, go and get checked again to make sur...

The American Society of Reproductive Medicine has just issued it's new Committee on the role of tubal surgery now that we also have in vitro fertilization (IVF). Women who have had prior PID, prior endometriosis , prior pelvic surgery, previous tubal ligation , or other chronic vaginal  infections may have blocked fallopian tubes as the reason for their infertility. For many years we only had the ability to perform open surgeries to correct these problems and help women with tubal blockage have a child. Then for many years physicians were erring on the side of IVF because the pregnancy rate per cycle is slightly better than say putting cut tubes back together. But tubal surgeries can be very cost effective and fixing the tubes, if it works, will allow women to be fertile for the years going forward, not just that one cycle of IVf. So the committee has weighed in on a number of issues, first they have said that a firm diagnosis of the problem should be achieved. And if there is...

In our office we joke about the accuracy of rain prediction: I usually say it is correct about 50% of the time, what's your take? In medicine we have improved the diagnosis of tubal pregnancy greatly, but unfortunately the initial diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy may be incorrect up to 40 percent of the time! Ectopic pregnancies are actually not a rare thing, but occur once in 50 pregnancies. In a new study that looked at the medical consequences of missing the diagnosis of normal and interpreting the pregnancy as doomed they caution the treatments can be harmful. This study discusses the medications used to treat tubal pregnancy, in the cases that can be treated with medicine, can be very harmful to a pregnancy that is actually developing in the uterus and may go on to term. So that if a woman has a wanted pregnancy, she and her gyno may have to wait for the diagnosis to be clear. Waiting is potentially dangerous because some tubal pregnancies can bleed internally, but ...

Ectopic pregnancy Women don't (as often) miss the fact that they are pregnant. The over the counter pregnancy tests are very accurate and easy to come by. But determining whether the pregnancy is healthy, or even in the uterus, often will require a visit to the physician. If you have symptoms of pelvic pain, the visit should be arranged promptly.  These symptoms could be a an abnormally developing pregnancy such as an evolving miscarriage. Other causes of pain with a positive pregnancy test can be an early pregnancy accompanied by an ovarian cyst or enlarging uterine fibroids. But we worry the most about a tubal pregnancy because it can be a serious complication. Ectopic pregnancies still account for 6% of maternal deaths. Although ectopic pregnancy patients may have bleeding or pain with their positive pregnancy test, about 1/2 of patients with a tubal pregnancy have symptoms at all.  Only 1-2% of all pregnancies in the US as of 2012 are in the fallopian tube and n...