Insemination – Process, Risks, Costs
In Pakistan, around 10 to 15 percent of childless couples live with an unfulfilled desire to have children. So that their wish of having their own child may come true, those affected place their hope in various assisted reproduction or artificial insemination procedures. One variant is insemination. This involves the transfer of semen into the female body – without any sexual intercourse.
In other procedures, such as IVF Cost in Pakistan or intracytoplasmic sperm injection ( ICSI ), the fertilization of the egg takes place outside the female organism in a test tube, and fertilization in insemination occurs naturally in the woman’s body.
What exactly is insemination and under what circumstances is it an option? How does sperm transfer work and what risks and costs can the treatment involve? Here you can get all the important information about insemination.
What is insemination?
Insemination is one of the gentle, painless fertility treatment procedures in which male sperm are transferred directly into the woman’s uterus.
Sperm transfer does not represent artificial insemination in the true sense. Rather, the technique is to be understood as a kind of “tutoring” or shortcut for the sperm, whose path to the egg is made easier or shortened by insemination. As a rule, insemination is carried out by a doctor, but it can also be carried out on your own at home (home insemination, self-insemination) using the so-called cup method.
The most common method is assisted sperm transfer into the uterus (intrauterine). Medically, the process is therefore also known as intrauterine insemination or IUI for short. The advantage of this method is that the sperm are spared the passage through the acidic environment of the vagina and through the mucus of the cervix ( cervical mucus ). B. if sperm quality is limited or if the cervical mucus is thick, natural fertilization can be difficult.
Insemination: Types of sperm transfer
In the field of reproductive medicine, a distinction is made between three types of insemination. During insemination, the man’s sperm cells can be injected into the following three areas of the female body:
- Intrauterine insemination (IUI): sperm transfer into the womb (uterus)
- Intracervical insemination (ICI): sperm transfer into the cervix
- Intratubar insemination (ITI): sperm transfer into the fallopian tubes (Tuba uterine)
The treating doctor decides on the type of method.
Homologous and heterologous insemination
In addition to the location of transmission, insemination treatment also differentiates according to the origin of the sperm: in so-called homologous insemination, the partner’s semen is used, in the heterologous or oncogenic form, the sperm of a donor from an anonymous sperm bank is used. This is also colloquially known as sperm donation.
In Pakistan, treatment with donor sperm has been used for many years. Around 1,000 children are born with the support of sperm donation. The most common reason for heterologous insemination is male infertility.
While in other countries the sperm donor remains anonymous, in Pakistan adults have the opportunity to find out the identity of the donor. According to the “Law regulating the right to know parentage when using heterologous sperm,” anonymous sperm donations are no longer permitted. Since 2018, there has been a sperm donor register in which the personal information of sperm donors and recipients is stored.
Insemination: indications
For which couples with an unfulfilled desire to have children is insemination used? Insemination always makes sense if you want to increase the chance of pregnancy as part of a natural cycle. The procedure is always the first option for artificial insemination in reproductive medicine if a couple has not become pregnant through normal sexual intercourse within a year and there are no serious fertility problems for the woman or man.
While the success of the IUI Treatment Lahore for men depends on sperm quality, for insemination women must have unbroken fallopian tubes, ovulation must take place and the uterine lining must be so well structured that a fertilized egg can implant.
Whether insemination is indicated depends on various causes and factors. It is mainly used when men either have poor sperm quality or have erection or ejaculation problems. The quality of the sperm depends on the number of fertilizable sperm cells in the ejaculate, the motility, and the shape. If all three parameters are abnormal in the spectrogram, doctors speak of the so-called OAT syndrome (oligo-asthenic-teratozoospermia syndrome). The analysis of a spermiogram provides clarity about the condition of the sperm and the man’s fertility. In this context, also read our article: Improving sperm quality.
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