Dr. Rachel McConnell graduated from Louisiana State University Medical School in Shreveport in 1986, and went on to complete an internship and residency at Tulane University Medical Center before going on to a fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the University of Southern California. She now heads up Nevada Fertility C.A.R.E.S. in Las Vegas, where she treats couples with all types of infertility issues. In this article, she discusses the growing popularity of fertility clinics for couples who are trying to conceive.
The interesting thing is, I personally would not necessarily say that more people are considering fertility treatments now than there were couples considering them in the past in the past. I think people were always doing it.
What makes the process of trying fertility treatment options different today, though, is that we are in a time in society right now where we have a little bit more public awareness of what the options are, and people are less afraid to discuss it openly with their friends and family.
So maybe those two things were different in the past, and that is why infertility always seemed so on the down low, like nobody was having fertility treatments done and no one was talking about it.
I think more than anything, the reason we are seeing more women and couples in the open considering fertility treatments now than ever before is because more people are getting comfortable with their diagnosis.
In the past, I would say that a lot of people would probably feel shame about their diagnosis if they were infertile. If a woman had infertility issues especially, she would not actively seek help oftentimes simply because she was so embarrassed.
It helps also now that there have been so many vast improvements in the technology that we use in helping couples with infertility issues.
While there were many techniques available to try in the past, including IVF, continued improvements in the way we do these types of treatments and use this new technology has given the outcomes a higher success rate, which raises confidence for people and encourages them to give it a try.
Another change has been the increased focus on the issues of male factor infertility. After intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) got introduced to the world and people started to do that, I would say that interest in fertility treatments for a lot of couples shot upward. Because overall, ICSI has actually been able to help a lot of couples get pregnant.
In the past, it used to be that if there were issues with the man’s sperm, then the only option left was to try a sperm donor. So you could either use a different man’s sperm, adopt a child, or be childless and live a childless life.
Now thanks to ICSI, that particular technique has given a lot of people the ability to have children who are genetically their own. And these are people who would not have been able to do this before ICSI was created. So obviously, you could say that is another reason why fertility treatments is general are more popular.
People have been using fertility treatments for a long time. But an increased awareness about things like male factor infertility and a newfound openness and interest in treatment methods really makes it seem like more people are trying these methods out now than in the past.
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