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| ART: What is it? | Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) is the term, which is used to describe all the variety of procedures, with the help of which either the sperm is placed inside the woman or the donated egg or employ techniques, which retrieve the eggs from the ovary in order to have them reimplaned are used. Fertilization occurs either in the laboratory conditions or directly inside of the uterus. According to the statistics, nowadays about 1% of all American babies, which makes more than 35,000 arrive each year in the result of different ART’s application.
The success rate for ART usually depends on a number of factors:
• the type of ART conducted;
• the age of either a woman or of a man / or both;
• the quality of eggs;
• the quantity of eggs;
• the quality of embryos;
• whether the embryo had been kept frozen;
• some specific statistics of a given clinic;
• The reason for the fertility problem
ART achieve live birth in more than 25% of cycles, when fresh, non donor eggs or embryos are taken. The rates of pregnancies is higher, however, not all of them come to term because of different reasons. About 35% of the ART – assisted live birth are multiple ones, and there are more than 4% of triplets or other higher order multiples arrive in the result of the ART procedures.
In addition the rate of success has increased recently in all age groups, though, it still remains somewhat lower in older women, rather than in younger ones. It is also considered that chances for the successful ART are greater in those women, who do not suffer from any uterus abnormality, as well as in the women, who have already had at least one successful pregnancy, which they managed to carry to term.
The rate of success also depends on whether the woman uses her own eggs for the fertilization, or whether the eggs are donated. It is also depends on whether the used eggs are fresh or frozen. Here the highest success rate is when the fresh donated eggs are used (the chance to get pregnant, to carry pregnancy to term and to deliver an alive baby is about 43% per transfer). The lowest success rate is when the woman uses her own eggs, which were frozen previously (in this case the chance to get pregnant, to carry pregnancy to term and to deliver an alive baby is about 22% per transfer for women, who are less than 35, and it is lower than 15% for women who are in their forties). However, using frozen eggs is less expensive than using fresh eggs, thus the infertile couple can afford themselves to do conduct more cycles with frozen eggs.
Each or the factors, mentioned above is to be discussed with you by your reproductive endocrinologist (this is how the fertility doctor is called) while your treatment is conducted.
Assisted Reproductive Technologies mainly include Artificial Insemination (AI) and In Vitro Fertilization (IVF).
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