“My parents would laugh and tell me that I always wanted to be a doctor since I could talk,” says Dr. Michael Putman. “I never wanted to be anything else!”
This singleness of purpose allowed Dr. Putman to find his true calling—helping patients become parents. “I have witnessed amazing advances since beginning my fertility practice when IVF was in its infancy,” he says. Dr. Putman and his team now have the ability to more safely stimulate ovaries to produce eggs and overcome severe male infertility by injecting a sperm into each egg, growing the fertilized eggs longer in the lab to produce blastocysts, which can be biopsied to test for inherited diseases.
“These advances are part of the technological progress that has contributed to making the chance of parenthood greater for those having struggled to have a child,” Dr. Putman says. “There are fertility challenges that still drive us to find new and better ways.” For instance, one in 500 women have absolute uterine factor infertility (the absence of a uterus). In 2015, the first baby was born in a transplanted uterus in Sweden. “In 2016, I was asked to join the uterus transplant team at Baylor Scott & White,” Dr. Putman says. “We were proud to announce the birth of the first baby born in the U.S. Our team has the largest, most successful program in the world. I am fortunate to be a doctor and still love getting up every day, ready to see my patients. Making dreams come true has always been, and will continue to be, my dream.”
Fertility Center of Dallas
Baylor Medical Pavilion 3900 Junius Street, Suite 610 Dallas, Texas 75246
214.823.2692
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