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Patient practices such as vaginal douching aren't generally a high priority among clinicians. However, douching may increase risks of chlamydial infection, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, and vaginal and cervical cancer. This report links douching to reduced fertility in 840 married, parous women aged 18 to 39 in King County, Washington (all had been controls in a population-based infertility study).
The mothers were interviewed about factors related to fertility and how long it had taken them to conceive. Women who douched more than twice yearly were only about 70% as likely to become pregnant each month as those who douched less or not at all, even after adjustment for potential confounders such as age, smoking, intercourse…