What is IVF & Step by Step IVF Process

 In Vitro Fertilization or IVF Guide is a series of fertility related procedures designed to accomplish the fertilization of an egg outside the body of the woman in a specialized laboratory. 

Below are the steps involved in an IVF treatment cycle.

Ovarian Stimulation

Women are prescribed fertility drugs to facilitate ovarian stimulation for an average of 10 to 11 days. This is done with the aim of producing and maturing multiple eggs for egg retrieval. Even in cases where ovulation is functioning as it should, it is commonplace to employ fertility drugs to produce more than a single egg as pregnancy rates are higher when there are more than one egg. 

This is achieved by your doctor through careful designing of a protocol that is aimed at obtaining the maximum number of eggs while at the same time protecting against development of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. 

Egg Retrieval 

The eggs are removed from the follicles in your ovaries by means of a surgical procedure about 34 to 36 hours after receiving the trigger shot. For the means of carrying out this procedure, an ultrasound is employed to visually guide a tiny needle through the top part of the vagina and into one ovary followed by the other. This process requires sedation by an IV which is watched over closely by an anaesthesiologist. 

Using gentle suction, the follicles are entered into and their contents are removed which brings out the eggs along with the fluid in a process that takes less than 30 minutes.

This is followed by the suctioning off of the fluid from the egg-containing follicles into a test tube which is then passed on to an embryologist who employs a microscope to look for the egg in each test tube of follicular fluid. It is standard practice to document all the details of the egg. 

Fertilization

The maturity and quality of the eggs is determined after the eggs reach the laboratory. The fertilization happens when the mature eggs are transferred into a special culture medium and placed with the sperm inside an incubator. 

One of the two methods of fertilization are used - a conventional insemination and an intra-cytoplasmic injection. Which one of the two is employed is determined by multiple factors related to the couple going through the IVF treatment cycle. 

Embryo Transfer

After the fertilization has occurred, the IVF team, along with the couple, decide the time of embryo transfer which could be anywhere between three to five days after egg retrieval. 

The age of the couple is a major determining factor in deciding how many embryos are produced. It used to be common practice to transfer multiple embryos with the hope that it would maximize the success of the IVF treatment, but slowly it came to be observed that this often resulted in twins and triplets, which is not always desirable as it raises issues concerning preterm birth and other complications. It is considered the safest approach to limit the transfer to a single embryo.