Disability Resource Directory

Treating Infertility - Try and Try Again?

Infertility can be treated in a variety of ways. It can be treated by way of conventional medicine, surgery, assisted reproductive technology (ART) or artificial insemination. Sometimes one treatment will be tried and if it does not prove successful, another will be attempted. In other cases, more than one treatment is combined for optimum results. Approximately two thirds of all couples that seek help for infertility are able to have a baby at some point in time. In an estimated 80 to 85 percent of cases, infertility is treated by way of surgery or drugs.

A doctor will determine particular treatments for infertility based on a number of factors which will include the results of diagnostic tests, the length of time a couple has been attempting to conceive, the age of both partners, the overall general health of both partners, and whether or not the partners have a preference for having a boy or a girl.

Infertility in men is most often related to sexual problems or too few sperm and therefore treatment is decided according to these problems. A sexual problem could be either impotency or premature ejaculation and in most instances, either medicine or behavioural therapy or both is used to treat these problems. If a lack of sperm is the problem or if the sperm are not good swimmers then surgery can be undertaken to correct this situation. In some cases, physicians can surgically remove sperm from the man's reproductive tract to use for the purposes of impregnating a woman. Sometimes an infection can be to blame for low sperm count and if this is the case then antibiotics can be prescribed to clear up the infection.

A variety of different treatments are often employed to treat women who are infertile. If ovulation occurs sporadically or not at all then it is essential for the woman to speak with her doctor about both the pros as well as the cons of taking medicine to improve the situation and get her ovulation back to normal. It is extremely important that a woman understands all of the risks and benefits as well as the side effects that could accompany these medications.

Surgery is sometimes a viable method of treating some instances of infertility in women, depending on where the problem lies. If a woman has a blockage in her fallopian tubes then surgery could be effective and surgery could also be effective if the problem lies with the ovaries or the uterus.

Another type of treatment for infertility is intrauterine insemination(IUI). Intrauterine insemination is more commonly known in lay people's terms as artificial insemination. The way this procedure is done is that a woman is injected with sperm that has been specially prepared in a laboratory. In some cases before artificial insemination is undertaken the female patient is instructed to take medication that is meant to stimulate ovulation. IUI is most often a viable means of treating females who have problems in one way or another with their amount of cervical mucus; when there is a "mild male factor" causing the infertility and for those who have infertility problems that have no apparent cause.

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