Assisted Reproduction and Ovulation Promotion

  The World Health Organization has proposed that “infertility, cardiovascular diseases and tumors have become the three major diseases that affect human life and health today”, and the incidence of infertility is increasing year by year. The main means are artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization. Artificial insemination involves the injection of the male partner’s sperm into the vagina or uterine cavity during the woman’s ovulation period. IVF involves removing both the female partner’s egg and the male partner’s sperm, fertilizing them in a Petri dish, forming an embryo and then placing it back into the female partner’s uterine cavity.  Artificial insemination is mainly used to treat mild oligospermia or sexual dysfunction in the male partner, provided that the female partner’s fallopian tubes are open, otherwise this method cannot be used. At our center, we can also perform donor-insemination, which is basically the same as FIC, with the only difference that the sperm used is thawed sperm from a sperm bank. During the treatment, the woman needs to be monitored for ovulation and if she cannot ovulate normally, she needs to be assisted with oral ovulation stimulating drugs. In other words, IUI sometimes requires ovulation promotion and sometimes does not, depending on whether the woman is able to ovulate normally or not.  IVF is the common name for “in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer”. The indications include bilateral tubal obstruction, endometriosis, severe oligozoospermia and ovulation disorders in the male partner. Most of the drugs used for ovulation in IVF are high purity, high dose gonadotropins, which are designed to ensure a certain number of eggs. Foreign researchers have found that the success rate is proportional to the number of eggs obtained within a certain range. By summarizing the data from our center, we found that the success rate can reach 60-70% with the right number of eggs obtained; however, the success rate does not increase when the number of eggs obtained exceeds a certain number, but can lead to complications such as ovarian hyperstimulation and early onset of tumors.  With normal ovulation monitoring, it is not necessary and should be avoided to obtain many eggs, ideally 1-2 eggs. Currently embryo transfer is possible up to the age of 35 with two embryos and up to 35 with three embryos, but at the same time the risk of multiple pregnancies is greatly increased. At this time, there are also many people who will be concerned about the health of the baby. It has been reported in the literature that babies born from assisted reproductive techniques are no more likely to have malformations than those born from natural conception.