Effects Of In Vitro Fertilization

In vitro fertilization (IVF) has revolutionized the treatment of infertility in women over the last fifty years. This process requires removing eggs from a woman’s body and fertilizing them with sperm outside of the body: in vitro. Babies born from this procedure are commonly referred to as “test tube babies.” The idea of IVF has been around for a very long time, but was not able to be implemented successfully until the discovery of sperm capacitation in the early 1950s. However, even after this discovery, it took another twenty years before scientists learned enough about capacitation and its implications in reproduction to successfully conceive the first “test tube baby” in the 1970s (1). IVF has since allowed thousands of couples that were previously considered infertile to become pregnant and conceive a child. …show more content…
There is speculation of high chances of antepartum complications, complications associated with having multiples, and post-partum complications for the neonates, all due to IVF treatments. Moreover, there is little known about the long term effects on children born via IVF because most research is limited to less than a year after birth (2). Along with little research on the long-term effects of IVF, there is little known about the differences in complications arising from singleton births and multiples births conceived by IVF. A few research groups have come together to collect and compare what little data there is on the long-term effects of IVF for both mother and child. By examining these works, there is little research to show what complications or effects are direct results of IVF