The History of IVF

1986

Monash IVF report on the world’s first pregnancy and birth from the sperm retrieval operation performed on a patient who had a blocked sperm duct.

First description of transvaginal sector scan sonography for needle-guided transvaginal follicle aspiration (Feichtinger W, Kemeter P. Transvaginal sector scan sonography for needle guided transvaginal follicle aspiration and other applications in gynecologic routine and research. Fertil Steril 1986 May;45(5):722-5).

First pregnancy, following IVF donated oocytes, in a non-ovarian failure patient. (Rosenwaks Z, Veeck LL, Liu HC.Pregnancy following transfer of in vitro fertilized donated oocytes. Fertil Steril. 1986;45(3):417-20).

First report on pregnancy after translaparoscopic zygote intrafallopian transfer (Devroey P, Braeckmans P, Smitz J, Van Waesberghe L, Wisanto A, Van Steirteghem A, Heytens L, Camu F. Pregnancy after translaparoscopic zygote intrafallopian transfer in a patient with sperm antibodies. Lancet, 1986 7;1:1329). In parallel the goup at the RWH was involved too in studies on gamete intra-Fallopian transfer (GIFT), (Molloy D, Speirs A, du Plessis Y, McBain J, Johnston I. A laparoscopic approach to a program of gamete intrafallopian transfer. Fertil Steril. 1987;47(2):289-94).

Delivery of twins from frozen human eggs (Chen C, Pregnancy after human oocyte cryopreservation. Lancet 1986, 1,884 – 886).
Christopher Chen

Jacqueline Mandelbaum with Dan Szollosi described the microstructures of the human oocyte, which becameknown as ‘oocyte dysmorphia’ (Szollosi D, Mandelbaum J, Plachot M, Salat-Baroux J, Cohen J. Ultrastructure of the human preovulatory oocyte. J In Vitro Fert Embryo Transf. 1986 ;3:232-42).