What is IVF

11/15/2013

Arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion is not always con­cep­tion in vit­ro. Assist­ed repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies involve med­ical inter­ven­tion if nat­ur­al fer­til­iza­tion is impos­si­ble for some rea­son. It is thanks to the achieve­ments of med­i­cine that many cou­ples, despite health prob­lems, were able to become par­ents.

Arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion was first suc­cess­ful in 1978 thanks to British doc­tors (Step­ta and Edwards). The world’s first test-tube baby was Louise Brown, who was born in the same year in the UK. Since that moment, thou­sands of chil­dren have been born through repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies. Of course, all sci­en­tif­ic research was ini­tial­ly car­ried out on ani­mals — it was this invalu­able expe­ri­ence that made it pos­si­ble to apply the stud­ied meth­ods to the human body. Recent­ly, this branch of med­i­cine has been devel­op­ing most dynam­i­cal­ly.

Fer­til­iza­tion out­side the body is most often car­ried out due to female infer­til­i­ty. This method is most often cho­sen for those women who have prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with the con­di­tion of the fal­lop­i­an tubes. For exam­ple, the tubes may be removed due to surgery or will be impass­able due to the inflam­ma­to­ry process. Arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion is also car­ried out if the cause of infer­til­i­ty is endometrio­sis. In addi­tion, a wom­an’s body can pro­duce anti­bod­ies to her part­ner’s sperm. Male infer­til­i­ty can also be an indi­ca­tion for “in vit­ro” con­cep­tion — if the prob­lems are relat­ed to sta­mi­na, mobil­i­ty or sperm count. Arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion gives every chance to become par­ents to those who have not been helped by med­ical or sur­gi­cal meth­ods of expo­sure.

So, among the main meth­ods of arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion can be dis­tin­guished: IVF (in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion), insem­i­na­tion (sperm is trans­ferred into the uter­ine cav­i­ty), ICSI (sperm is placed into the egg by injec­tion). In Euro­pean coun­tries, assist­ed repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies are wide­ly used in both pri­vate and pub­lic clin­ics. When choos­ing an insti­tu­tion, one should care­ful­ly eval­u­ate both its tech­ni­cal equip­ment and the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of the staff. The clin­ic should have good rec­om­men­da­tions — after all, the cost of such ser­vices is quite high, and only pro­fes­sion­als can guar­an­tee suc­cess.