Fertility is a major aspect of a person’s overall health, and for some adults, their fertility may be compromised. Men and women alike sometimes visit fertility clinics or clinics for artificial insemination, and this may even include IVF, or In Vitro Fertilization. IVF prices vary, but a woman may consult a fertility clinic ahead of time and determine IVF prices there, along with costs of other procedures common at such sites. Fertility experts or their staff may quote IVF prices, and a patient may decide if that is the correct route to take. What are some common causes of fertility issues among adults today, and what are some modern medical countermeasures?
Why Infertility Happens
In the case of women, infertility may happen for a wide variety of reasons, and today, 11.9% of adult women have received fertility treatment in their lifetime. What is more, surgery or drug therapy may be common to fix these fertility issues, and sometimes, invasive medicine is needed. Sometimes, a woman may suffer from infertility because her ovaries are not releasing oocytes (or “egg cells”) properly, and without one, fertilization is of course impossible. In other cases, a fertilized egg in the woman’s body may attach itself to the wrong place, such as the fallopian tube rather than the uterine lining to form the placenta. This, too, will interfere with infertility, and can in fact prove dangerous. In other cases, a woman is suffering infertility because of her lifestyle, which may include heavy tobacco use, excessive drinking or drug abuse, or chronic stress. Even mental health such as consistent stress may interfere with fertility. And age itself is a factor, with a woman’s primer fertility happening between ages 20 and 24. From that point on, her fertility will slowly, then more rapidly, decline. By age 40, only two in five women who want to conceive a child will have the power do so without assistance. By the time a woman goes through menopause and is in the post-menopausal stage (which lasts the rest of her life), fertility is impossible.
Men have several potential reasons for infertility, and like women, their lifestyle such as drinking or drug use, or ongoing stress, can be a problem. Men may also suffer blunt trauma to the testicles, or their testicles may be exposed to radiation. These issues may lower a man’s sperm count and/or quality, and this lowers his fertility. Overall, when a couple enter a fertility clinic, in one in three cases, the woman’s health is the problem. In another third of cases, infertility is due to the man’s health, and in the remaining cases, the cause is simply unknown.
Medicine for Fertility
A woman and man who are having conception issues may visit a fertility clinic, and they might first have visited their doctor to get a referral. Or, they may look online to find fertility clinics in their area. Either way, the man and woman may each have their reproductive health examined until a diagnosis is reached, and now the couple may have some options about what to do next. Men may get testosterone injections to increase his sperm count and quality, and a woman may have many options. One of them is IVF, In Vitro Fertilization if she so chooses. In this case, sperm cells from the male partner are extracted, and they are combined with one of the female partner’s oocytes and fertilized outside of her body. Once this is done, the embryo is transferred to the woman’s uterus, and the pregnancy may proceed normally from that point on. A couple may ask for the costs of such procedures, such as IVF prices.
A woman might also need surgery on her uterus, fallopian tubes, or ovaries, such as if there is blockage or if her ovaries are not properly releasing oocytes as they should. Sometimes, a surrogate mother may be used, in which case a female volunteer will be implanted with the couple’s embryo and allowed to come to term before a live birth. This may be done for any number of reasons, such as if the female partner is expected to face potentially deadly complications during her own pregnancy or childbirth. And in some cases, the female partner may simply take medications or hormone injections for fertility.