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Treating Infertility Essay

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Infertility is the inability to naturally concieve a child, or to carry a pregnancy full term. This could be down to the male in the partnership, the female, or in some cases, both. Infertility affects approximately 10% of people of reproductive age. Roughly 40% of cases involve a male contribution or factor, 40% involve a female factor, and the remainder involve both sexes. There are several different reasons why a couple may be unable to concieve naturally, if a woman is unable to concieve it may be down to general factors - for example, significant liver disease, Ovarian Factors such as Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, Cervical factors such as Insufficient cervical mucus, Vaginal factors such as Vaginal Obstruction or Genetic factors. If …show more content…

Usually 10 days of injections are necessary.When in the laboratory, surrounding cells are removed from the egg and the egg is prepared for fertilization. Inactive cells and seminal fluid are also removed from the males sperm in preparation for the treatment. The sperm and the egg are incubated together for about 18 hours. By this time fertilisation has usually taken place. Occasionally however, the sperm count is so low a single sperm is injected directly into the egg instead. The major risk of IVF is the risk of multiple births. There have been many cases of women going in for fertility treatments and then giving birth to more than one child as a result. This is because of the practice of transferring multiple embryos at embryo transfer. Strict limits on the number of embryos that may be transferred have been set in some countries to reduce the risk of multiple births. Another risk of IVF is birth defects. It has been suggested that there is a 30-40% increase risk of birth defects in children born out of IVF than children concieved using natural means. Another popular fertility treatment is Artificial insemination by husband (AIH) This is when sperm from the husband or partner is placed into a females uterus or cervix using artificial means rather than by natural means. When a couple decide to use AIH in order to concieve the females menstruation cycle

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