What is "intrauterine inseination" or "IUI"?

What is "intrauterine inseination" or "IUI"?

Richard Paulson (Chief, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, USC) gives expert video advice on: What treatments are available for male infertility?; What treatments are available for female infertility?; Are there specific fertility treatments for women over the age of 35? and more...

Intrauterine insemination, abbreviated, IUI, is a procedure in which the sperm is assisted on their way from the outside world to the site of fertilization, which is in the fallopian tube, by placing them directly into the Uterus. Therefore, intrauterine insemination. This is not a normal place for them to be in so many numbers. They are normally deposited in very large numbers, of course, in the vagina when the couple has intercourse, and then as a result of filtration through the cervix, only a small number of sperm actually make it into the uterus and then out to the fallopian tubes. So, in an IUI procedure, the sperm, the "little swimmers", first must be seperated from the sticky white stuff in which they normally arrive. Those are the prosthetic secretions that the male makes. And those be would not very nice inside the uterus. They would cause lots of cramping and lots of side effects for the woman. So, the "swimmers", the spermatazoa, must be separated from the seminal plasma and they are then injected into the uterus in an IUI procedure. And this results in a tremendous increase of the number of sperm that are available for fertilization at any one time. And as a consequence, they are able to get out to the end of the fallopian tube, get to the egg, and increase their probability of achieving fertilization over that which happens in the natural cycle, in which presumably, of course, the couple is experiencing infertility.