What is Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART)?
ART includes all fertility treatments in which both eggs and sperm are handled. In general, ART procedures involve surgically removing eggs from a woman’s ovaries, combining them with sperm in a laboratory and transferring the fertilized eggs (embryos) back to the woman’s body or donating them to another woman. ART does not refer to treatments in which only sperm are handled or those in which a woman takes medications solely to stimulate egg production without intent of egg retrieval.
Any medical technique that attempts to obtain a pregnancy by means other than by coitus is defined as ART. In other words, these techniques manipulate the sperm and oocytes outside the body, and the gametes or embryos are transferred into the uterus. ART includes artificial insemination (AI), in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET) and gamete intra-fallopian transfer (GIFT).
