Implications of obesity for female infertility

Abstract

Obesity is an increasing problem in more or less all industrialized countries. In Germany approximately 40% of women in the fertile age group are overweight or obese. This leads to disorders at a variety of levels in reproductive functions. Furthermore obesity leads to a significant increase in complications during pregnancy and delivery. Counseling of obese women should therefore aim at normalization of body weight before a pregnancy is conceived. This would reduce maternal as well as fetal risk factors. Patients with morbid obesity who undergo bariatric surgery need special supervision as this type of surgery leads to major changes in maternal metabolism and therefore pregnancies after bariatric surgery are classified as high-risk pregnancies.