Unfortunately, parenting is not possible for some couples. However, the advancement of medicine has made it possible to seek solutions for those with fertility problems: Through various treatments, it is possible to bring the gametes closer together for fertilization to occur.
Assisted reproductive techniques are various treatments destinated to resolve fertility disorders of the couple. There are special solutions for each case.
Infertility
Infertility consists of the iinability to conceive spontaneously after one to two years of attempted pregnancy. This can affect men and women equally, or have unknown or mixed causes.
Some reasons for notorious infertility include absence or very low number of sperm in man, or blocked tubes in women, without the possibility of repairing them. Also, after 30 years of age, the maximum peak of female fertility begins to fall, since the ovules age.
Some female physical causes of the difficulty of conceiving a child are the following:
- Ovulation disturbances, such as polycystic ovary.
- Mechanical problems, such as obstruction of the fallopian tubes and pelvic adhesions. These can be derived from infections, endometriosis or pelvic surgery.
When there is severe male infertility, surgical treatment fails, or there are diseases with no apparent cause, it is necessary to resort to assisted fertilization treatments to achieve pregnancy.
Fertilization techniques
To treat infertility, it can be used assisted reproductive technology. This includes fertility treatments that involve both the woman’s eggs and the man’s sperm. The first step is go to a specialist and determine the origin of the problem, and then choose the most suitable method for the couple.
Assisted reproduction are biomedical techniques that facilitate or replace natural processes to achieve reproduction. These techniques have helped thousands of couples around the world to achieve pregnancy.
There are some cases where the diagnosis of infertility is not possible, and cause cannot be determined. For those cases, simpler measures can be taken, such as testing the cervical mucus, schedule sex (Billings method), adopt certain specific sexual positions that favor fertilization, among other options.
Some more complex procedures Assisted reproduction uses donor eggs or sperm, or previously frozen embryos. It can also consist of using a surrogate mother.
Let’s see in detail the most common techniques:
- In vitro fertilization: One technique is to extract eggs from a woman’s body and mix them with a man’s sperm to produce embryos. Later, the embryos are placed in the woman’s body. This technique is usually the most common and effective type of assisted reproduction.
- Artificial insemination o Intracytoplasmic sperm injection: consists of inject a sperm into the cytoplasm of the egg. The best quality sperm are prepared and selected. It is used in cases of severe male fertility problems.
- Preservation of fertility: its purpose is to achieve a pregnancy future. It is used in cases of disease such as cancer, for example. We proceed to freezing of oocytes, embryos, ovarian tissue, or semen, as appropriate, to be used in the future.
One of the most common “complications” of this type of treatment is obtaining a multiple pregnancy. This can be prevented by limiting the number of embryos that are placed in a woman’s body, which in turn decreases the chances of a successful pregnancy.
If you think you may be a candidate for an assisted fertilization technique, do not hesitate to contact an expert and evaluate your case. Do not despair! These methods can help them become parents.
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