ABSTRACT
Among the 15% of couples reported to receive infertility services in the USA, over 100 000 assisted reproductive technologies (ART) treatment cycles are reported each year.1 The field of ART comprises treatment strategies during which the egg (oocyte) and sperm are manipulated outside of the body. With the first successful birth in 1978 in the UK, in-vitro fertilization (IVF) represents the oldest ART technique.2
Following rapid demands and advances in the field, ART treatment now includes a number of related procedures, among which are gamete intrafallopian tube transfer (GIFT), zygote intrafallopian tube transfer (ZIFT), and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Since 1991, ICSI has been used to microinject a single spermatozoon directly into the cytoplasm of a mature oocyte.3 IVF and ICSI are most commonly employed, accounting in the USA for about 43% and 56% of reported ART cycles, respectively.1 Beyond these treatment strategies (IVF, ICSI, GIFT, ZIFT), additional laboratory manipulations may be performed, including embryo cryopreservation, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), assisted hatching (AH), and extended embryo culture to the blastocyst stage.4,5
