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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2297 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 4, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Doing research for NaNoWriMo and I have (yet another!) question for the medics among you.

How does one go about diagnosing a woman with a specific reproductive defect which prevents her from having children? MRI, CT, ultrasound, what?

The first port of call would likely be a hysterosalpingography (HSG), where we pay dye up the uterus and visualize its distribution, primarily to check the patency of the tubes and identify uterine defects like septate uteri and the like. You'd also certainly check for hormonal irregularities through blood tests. Beyond that, I'd assume a USG would be the next step, I struggle to think of anything a CT or MRI would immediately add for most of the common potential issues.

Beyond that, it depends on what the particulars of the infertility causing disease you have in mind are.

Not a medic, but a lot depends on what the problem is, and that's likely to be driven by how hard you want it to be to solve.

  • Endocrine disorders are the most common problem, usually sex hormone or thyroid related. Both can be diagnosed by interview and confirmed by blood test, but they can sometimes be treated (though not always effectively!), so if future certain infertility is a plot point you probably don't want to go with this.
  • Structural problems like damage or scarring to the fallopian tubes or uterus. These are usually detected via a mix of patient history and sono(saline)gram, with harder-to-diagnose cases going to an MRI (when available) or x-ray (when not). CT are sometimes used where other tests give unclear results and MRIs aren't available, but they're disfavored as the contrast agents don't really like going in that area, or don't like coming out afterward, and the radiation exposure is significant.
  • Ovary problems, such as cancers or cysts, can be trickier to detect, but they can cause infertility (such as by messing with hormone levels). The normal diagnostic pathway outside for people without fertility concerns typically involves complaints of abdominal pain, followed by blood tests and/or ultrasound, and finally a biopsy to confirm. But if someone's going in with fertility concerns, weird bloodwork, and abdominal pain it's plausible that they'd go to an MRI as a sort of broad-spectrum search, at least in the United States.
  • Genetic disorders are usually going to involve blood tests and/or family history work, unless the disorder has clear enough symptoms to start from there.

Yeah, uh, dude, this is like saying "let me Google that for you."

Presumably if the OP wanted a Copilot or ChatGPT summary he could have gotten one himself.

Give it five or ten years and I'll agree with you. LLMs haven't proliferated to the same extent that search engines have.

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