Many couples experience frustration, anxiety, and even depression when they are unable to conceive and successfully bear children. When this happens, it is easy to just give up and turn towards pursuing high cost medically assisted conception. Medically assisted conception uses what is officially called Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). It is also given the name in vitro fertilization and describes various techniques that are used to produce what has been commonly known as test tube babies. However, couples should be aware that ART is extremely expensive and there are health risks associated with the use of the procedures. Risks apply to mothers to-be and to children conceived by the use of ART.
There are many researchers who are evaluating whether the use of fertility drugs and the manipulation of eggs and sperm in the laboratory are setting the stage for adverse health effects in children. ART procedures use eggs retrieved during an outpatient surgical procedure. The woman’s eggs are combined with sperm in a petri dish; then the resulting embryo is placed in the woman’s uterus with the hope it will implant. Multiple embryos are placed in the uterus to increase the likelihood of pregnancy. The consequence of this technique is the high possibility of producing multiple children. This technique, and the one described in the next paragraph, requires laparoscopic surgery to harvest eggs from the woman’s ovaries, which introduces the potential for surgical complications. Intra cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), is a type of ART developed to address problems with sperm quality such as when a man’s sperm cells have a limited ability to move on their own or when there is a very low sperm count.
Today it is performed in roughly 60% of ART cycles in the United States. In this procedure, an individual sperm is injected through a micro needle directly into an egg. Multiple eggs are fertilized in this way, and then one or more embryos are placed into the woman’s uterus. The number of embryos that are implanted are determined by the woman’s age and the quality of the eggs.