Infertility: treatment methods
Treatment methods depend largely on the cause of infertility.A blockage of the sperm passages in both, male or female can be treated by surgery.
Treating hormonal imbalance in the female using several drugs has been very successful.
On the other hand, these fertile drugs increase a woman's chances of having multiple twins owing to the release of more than one egg at ovulation under the influence of the drug.
Psychological problems may be a cause of infertility. Normal fertility may return after psychological counseling.
Artificial insemination:
This method is the most popular alternative treatment. This is useful in cases which the male has enough sperms but can not produce pregnancy for some reason or another. He can donate semen, which then can be concentrated in the lab. Then injected into the woman's uterus.Invtro fertilization IVF:
In this method, an ovum is removed from the woman, fertilized by the sperm in the lab. To form the fertilized egg, which then allowed to divide in to many embryonic cell. This embryo is then injected into the woman uterus.Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI)
This technique involves injecting a single sperm directly into the centre of an egg and is performed under a microscope using a very fine needle. ICSI is used when there is a severe male factor problem that makes it more difficult for the sperm to penetrate the outer shell of the egg, for example sperm with poor movement (motility) and for example when there is a low sperm count, thus ensuring that one sperm will penetrate the egg. ICSI can also be used when for example there has been poor fertilisation of eggs during conventional IVF treatment of mixing sperm and eggs.There is not yet any clear evidence whether ICSI results in higher rates of birth defects. The number of babies reported to have major birth defects, such as cleft palate, is between 1 and 5% in both the general population and in babies born
following ICSI. Studies suggest that minor abnormalities occur in up to 20% of ICSI babies, compared to up to15% of the population. More studies are needed in order to gain further insight into these possible effects.
