Friday Fertility Fundas: What can I expect during IVF treatment?

Our expert tells you about what you can expect during IVF treatment

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Fertility is a topic that most people shy away from talking about. But when it comes to burning questions that you are just too shy to ask someone face to face, we have the answers for you; answered by our expert Dr. Anagha Karkhanis, Consultant, IVF and Reproductive Surgery, Cocoon Fertility

What can I expect when I go for IVF treatment?

IVF today is a proven, preferred and helpful tool for those couples who are not able to conceive naturally. When you start IVF treatment, you go through a lot of steps involving, blood tests, injections and visits to the IVF clinic. It includes a series of procedures (ovulation induction, egg retrieval, sperm collection / retrieval, fertilization and embryo transfer), that are used to assist with the conception of a child.

Essentially, your doctor will be mixing eggs and sperms in the laboratory to produce embryos. These embryos are implanted into the mother’s womb, which is a simple but precise procedure.

Stimulation of ovaries is done with injections to produce many eggs at a time. It can take upto 10-12 days for the eggs to be ready for collection. Collection of Eggs is a short procedure under general anaesthesia lasting 20 minutes. You go back home the same day. The husband will give a fresh semen sample on the say from which good sperm are selected to mix with the eggs to form an embryo. this will happen in the IVf lab. One or two embryos may be transferred and the rest frozen for later use in subsequent cycles. Freezing and storage of the embryos happens by vitrification using liquid nitrogen at minus 196 deg celcius.

If the first IVF cycle is successful, you are on your way. However, if it fails, you may decide to try again with one or more additional cycles. In such cases, as guided by your IVF specialist, it is advisable to wait for a month or two between the two cycles.

The probability of success of an IVF cycle will depend on several factors, such as the age of the woman, quality of the sperm, egg and the embryo and number of embryos transferred into the womb.

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