Throughout, the authors have adopted a clear and comprehensive style, providing the reader with sufficient factual information to further their understanding of the clinical problems under consideration. At the same time, much of the text is orientated towards helping the busy clinician acquire practical knowledge and skills. The general text on infertility is a suitable reference source for primary care physicians, nurses, ultrasonographers, embryologists, andrologists, counsellors and health psychologists who are involved in the care of couples with infertility. For both the established gynaecologists and those medical and nursing reproductive medicine specialists in training, this book offers a comprehensive source of up-to-date information on infertility and its management. Various professionals, such as clinicians and nurses will find this a suitable general text on infertility.

As such, this book will undoubtedly appeal to a large and varied cross section of professionals in the field of reproductive medicine and ideally, should be included in the library of everyone involved in providing infertility services. Ultimately, it should be the couple seeking solutions to their problem, and the work is written in a manner that allows even laypersons to gain some understanding of what is happening to them.

Assisted Reproductive Techniques have become well-established set of infertility treatment methods, which have helped hundreds of thousands of infertile couples worldwide. During this journey, several important milestones have been passed, for example, cryopreservation of human embryos, oocyte donation, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, intracytoplasmic sperm injection and others. The field of ART continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Practitioners and investigators in the field continue to search for, develop, and implement innovations in an effort to address shortcomings in the efficacy of the technology. This book has addressed issues in ART that have never been included in subject textbooks before, like the chapter on Embryo Donation. Issues that clearly reflect the areas of potential improvement that might be translated into improved patient outcomes have been included in the section on ART. The overall objective of the ART section is to explore current knowledge about how factors related to the oocyte, the embryo, and the endometrium can be applied to improve outcomes in ART.

Since the introduction of Endoscopy by Jacobaeus in 1910, there has been a dramatic change in the pattern of and approach to the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases of the female reproductive 8organs. The advances in techniques of operative Endoscopy, in high technology and in instrumentation (such as endoscopes, video cameras and videomonitors) have made it possible to perform laparoscopically many of the infertility-related procedures previously requiring laparotomy. Every aspect of fertility enhancing hysteroscopic and laparoscopic surgery has been dealt with in the section on Endoscopy in Infertility.

The last section on “Future Challenges” has truly thought provoking topics, which have been discussed thoroughly including the scourge of the developing world—genital tuberculosis as well as human cloning. For hundreds of years, the medical world has dreamed of being able to repair, piece by piece, any ailing or worn-out part of the human body. This science began with organ transplants to xenotransplantation and is moving towards cell therapy. Cell therapy is today widely used for blood disorders (transplantation of blood-forming stem cells) and burns (skin grafts), and experiments are currently being carried out involving transplants of liver cells to treat liver diseases, endocrine pancreatic cells to treat diabetes and neural stem cells to treat various neuro-degenerative disorders. I hope that this volume will stimulate the readers to think more about these profound and sensitive ethical issues.

This book was conceived to discuss the current techniques in Gynecological Endoscopy, Infertility and ART, the validity and effectiveness of the approach, the lessons learnt in the past, and the future challenges that are posed before us. It aims to familiarize clinicians, surgeons, researchers, students, and patients alike with the undaunted innovations in medical technology, expose the grey areas of management in the various allied fields of reproductive medicine, and present solutions to the various medical and surgical challenges, thus helping them to fit the pieces together and focus and rationalize thinking to achieve a positive outcome. The interrogative design of the carefully thought of chapters, distributed in four sections, churns out answers to ‘why we do what we do, how we do it, when should we do it, and are we on the right track?’ engaging the contributor and the reader in a process of constructive self-evaluation. By offering a comprehensive and panoramic view of the areas most crucial to the management and treatment of infertility—Gynecological Endoscopy, Medical and Surgical therapy for Infertility and Assisted Reproduction, it serves to complete the missing links in the thought process in a single edition, bridge the misinformation gap, and unite the medical fraternity in a common belief and motive.

We appreciate the finesse and intellectual skill with which the contributors have presented information pertinent to their chapters and thank them for sharing their uniquely invaluable experiences with the reader. We sincerely do hope that we have succeeded in our effort to disseminate the necessary knowledge required to practice evidence-based reproductive medicine that is safe, productive, cost-effective, morally and ethically acceptable in the best interests of desirous couples and humanity as a whole.