The test—which is available free of charge under Medicare in Australia— involves the fallopian tubes being flushed out with iodised poppy seed oil, news.com.au reports.
Australian obstetrician and researcher Professor Ben Mol said in the groundbreaking study, 40 percent of infertile women got pregnant after their fallopian tubes were flushed out.
The research was published in The New England Journal of Medicine and is based on a trial of 1100 women in the Netherlands.
While 29 percent of women whose fallopian tubes were flushed with water became pregnant within six months, 40 percent of women fell pregnant after their tubes were flushed out with poppy seed oil.
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Professor Mol said only around 20 per cent of the women studied "would have become pregnant without any treatment".
By comparison, around 40 percent of women under the age of 30 fall pregnant after one cycle of IVF.
The professor recommends that more women could try having their fallopian tubes flushed before starting on IVF, New Scientist notes.
“If you know your infertility is due to poor semen quality or no ovulation then this is not going to help, but if there’s any other cause this might be beneficial,” he told the publication. “It’s really cheap compared with IVF.”
Called a hysterosalpingography (HSG), the dye test of the fallopian tubes was first conducted in 1917.
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