What is "assisted reproductive technology"?

What is "assisted reproductive technology"?

Richard Paulson (Chief, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, USC) gives expert video advice on: How often do assisted reproductive technology treatments produce multiple children?; Are assisted reproductive technology treatments expensive? and more...

The term "assisted reproductive technology" is a term that we use to class all of the different techniques together. Really, the first assisted reproductive technology was IVF, in vitro fertilization, in which eggs are removed from the woman's body, fertilized, allowed to become embryos, and then placed back into her uterus through the cervix. As time went along, this technique was modified, and we discovered different twists and turns. For example, GIFT, which stands for gamete intrafallopian transfer, involves taking the eggs and sperm, putting them together, and without waiting for fertilization to occur, putting them back into the fallopian tubes. ZIFT is another method of assisted reproductive technology, in ZIFT the eggs and sperm are combined in the laboratory and then only 24 hours later, just after the egg and sperm have come together, we put them back into the fallopian tubes. All of these assisted reprodutive techniques share the concept that the ovaries are stimulated and the eggs are collected and combined with sperm in the laboratory, then somehow the combined eggs and sperm are put back into the woman's body or perhaps someone else's body. That is why the term "assisted reproductive technologies" was invented, to put all of them together under this one heading. And of course it is abbreviated as A-R-T, or ART, so when we talk about "State of the art", it has a double meaning. But "assisted reproductive technologies" simply refers to all of these techniques mentioned together.