West Coast IVF Clinic - In Vitro Fertilization
In vitro fertilization is a relatively simple and painless procedure. For patients with inoperative fallopian tubes, couples experiencing male fertility problems or those who have been unsuccessful with less advanced treatments, IVF is often the best alternative to achieve pregnancy.
Simply stated, IVF involves collecting eggs and sperm from you and your partner and placing them together in a laboratory dish for fertilization. Days later the microscopic embryos are transferred into the uterus where implantation and pregnancy will hopefully occur, as in a normal pregnancy.
The IVF procedure usually occurs over a few weeks, and is a four-phase process:
Phase I: Ovarian Stimulation. Medication is used to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple ovarian follicles (eggs).
Phase II: Egg Retrieval. Eggs are retrieved via follicle aspiration, in which a very thin catheter is carefully guided by ultrasound to withdraw the entire contents of the follicle, including the egg.
Phase III: Fertilization. Sperm is collected, washed and placed together with the egg to fertilize. The fertilized eggs are allowed to develop for a few days.
Phase IV: Embryo Transfer. A catheter containing an optimum number of embryos is gently inserted into the uterus and the embryos are transferred back to the mother. Two weeks later a simple blood test will verify if pregnancy has occurred.
While there are a number of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) available to infertile couples, in vitro fertilization (IVF) is by far the most utilized of these methods. In fact, IVF accounts for more than 95% of all ART procedures. If you're not familiar with IVF, then take a look at What is IVF?, which gives you a general overview of what is involved in this procedure.
To gain a better understanding of the procedure, though, you may want to read our more detailed descriptions of each stage of the IVF procedure, including retrieval, embryo culture, and transfering of the embryo. Our Timetable & Embryo Grading guide will help you understand just how your embryo develops before it is transfered back to you. Embryo Development will give you a detailed look at how a fertilized egg divides before being transferred.
It is important to note that there are two types of transfers that can occur in an IVF procedure: the standard 3-day transfer or a blastocyst transfer. Both types of transfer have advantages and disadvantages, as outlined in 3 Day Transfer vs. Blastocyst Transfers.
While your embryos are still in the lab, there are a number of techniques that IVF specialists can perform to improve the health your embryos. One such technique is assisted hatching, which may improve your embryos ability to implant in your uterus. Some couples also ask that their embryos receive a preimplantation genetic diagnosis before being transfered. This diagnositic test allows specialists to transfer only those embryos which are healthiest.
Since many eggs are retrieved and fertilized during IVF, you may be wondering what happen to those embryos that are not transfered back to you. A common procedure for numerous couples is to have the extra embryos cryo-preserved so that they can be used in future IVF cycles if necessary. This is known as frozen embryo transfer.
For couples who aren't sure that IVF is the right form of ART for them, there are alternatives. Some other types of ART include GIFT, ZIFT, and TET.
The term in vitro, from the Latin root meaning within the glass, is used, because early biological experiments involving cultivation of tissues outside the living organism from which they came, were carried out in glass containers such as beakers, test tubes, or petri dishes. Today, the term in vitro is used to refer to any biological procedure that is performed outside the organism it would normally be occurring in, to distinguish it from an in vivo procedure, where the tissue remains inside the living organism within which it is normally found.
A colloquial term for babies conceived as the result of IVF, test tube babies, refers to the tube-shaped containers of glass or plastic resin, called test tubes, that are commonly used in chemistry labs and biology labs. However in vitro fertilisation is usually performed in the shallower containers called Petri dishes. (Petri-dishes may also be made of plastic resins.) However, the IVF method of Autologous Endometrial Coculture is actually performed on organic material, but is yet called in vitro. This is used when parents are having infertility problems or they want to have multiple births.
More information: IVF Gender Selection / IVF Sex Selection