IVF Full Form
In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) is the most effective reproductive technology, through which fertilization is taken place by combining the woman’s egg and man’s sperm in a special laboratory to create an embryo and transferred that to a woman’s uterus. The procedure is performed only to make a woman pregnant.
In vitro fertilization (IVF) was first introduced by Robert Edward and Patrick Steptoe in the 1970s to treat female infertility. They got successful on 25th July 1978, when the first child named Louise Brown was born after trying 102 IVF cycles. Lesley and Peter brown became the parents of a healthy daughter, who was the worlds, first test-tube baby. The hospital where the first girl child took birth through IVF was Kershaw’s cottage hospital, England. In 2010, the physiologist Robert Edward got Novel Prize in medicine for his successful development of the IVF process.
However, the credit for the second IVF baby goes to Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay. The name of the baby girl was Durga, and she was an Indian. This event takes place just after 67 days of the first IVF baby on 3rd October 1978 in India.
Steps of IVF process
The steps of the IVF process are as follows:
- Ovarian stimulation.
- Egg retrieval.
- Sperm retrieval.
- Embryo transfer.
In this procedure, first, the doctor gives medicines for ovarian stimulation, which takes one to two weeks. After that, the doctor first examines to see that the eggs are ready for retrieval or not. After that the eggs are removed from the follicles through a needle. Then, they take semen from the male partner and separate sperm from semen fluid.
There are two process of fertilization, which are listed below:
(i) Conventional Insemination: - In this process, the sperm and the eggs are mixed and incubated for a night.
(ii) Intracytoplasmic sperm injection: - A single sperm is injected into the egg in this process. This process occurs either due to the low quality of sperm and the low number of sperm or failure of prior IVF attempts.
And, finally, the procedure of embryo transfer takes place after two to five days of egg retrieval.
Now, the doctor waits two weeks for confirmation, whether a woman is pregnant or not. If she is pregnant, they will refer her to a pregnancy specialist, and if she is not pregnant, she has to make another attempt of IVF.
Furthermore, there are several elements that make the IVF process successful like:-
- Women’s age should be below 40. The women in their young stage can became pregnant easily as well as their babies are healthier than age old women.
- More developed embryos have higher pregnancy chances than less developed embryos.
- Women who have given birth previously have more chances of getting pregnant through IVF than those women who have never given birth. As well as the women who have attempted multiple IVF procedures and still did not get pregnant have a lower chance to get pregnant.
- Women’s having addiction of smoking and drinking, as well as having obesity has lower chance to get pregnant.
Disadvantages of IVF
IVF has some risk and side effects, which are as follows:
- Baby can be premature, due to which they might be underweight.
- Due to injection and medication during ovulation, women can face several side effects like; abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, etc. It causes ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome due to which women can be overweight as well as can face the problem of breath.
- In advanced age, the chances of miscarriage increased, and they may also experience congenital disabilities.
- During the egg- retrieval process, a woman can experience bleeding, infection, or damage to the bowel, bladder, or a blood vessel by using a niddle.
- In very few cases, ectopic pregnancy can occur due to fertilized egg implantation outside the uterus. In that case, pregnancy can not be continued, as fertilized egg can not be survived outside the uterus.
- Sometimes, it has been saying that several medications can cause a specific type of ovarian tumor and increased risk of breast, cervical, endometrial, and ovarian cancer after IVF.
- Sometimes, this treatment affects financially, physically, and emotionally, which may lead to stress.
But, inspite of these complications, now a days, In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) has become the most important method for the treatment of infertility, as it can give a life, as well as can make someone mother or father.