A Spotlight on IVF!

When it comes to the world of infertility treatments, IVF remains at the top of the list as it has become more and more common today. It has been around for decades, and the basic idea of IVF is about uniting an egg and a sperm outside the body and then putting the resultant embryo back into the womb of the woman.

IVF is commonly used to treat:

• Aged women facing fertility issues

• Women with fallopian tube blockage or damage

• Women with conditions such as endometriosis

• Severe male infertility as a result of low sperm count or quality

It is essential to know that IVF is not a single treatment but a set of processes that requires a lot of time and patience from the couple undergoing the procedure and the right resources to carry out the treatment. The average timeline for an IVF cycle is about 6 to 8 weeks. However, based on the complexity of the case and the patient, the timeline can vary from person to person.

To further understand what an IVF process is all about and how it works, let’s look below:

1. Stimulating egg production through ovulation induction

Fertility drugs play an essential role in this process. These drugs trigger the body to produce more than one egg at a time, and the chances of pregnancy are higher than usual. Simultaneously, you’ll go through ultrasounds and blood tests to keep track of your blood hormone levels and overall progress.

2. Removal of eggs

You’ll receive a hormonal injection before the scheduled day of egg retrieval. This injection helps the egg to mature quickly, after which you will undergo a minor surgical procedure (follicular aspiration) to remove the eggs from your ovaries through your vagina, with the help of a needle that has a suction device attached to it. Although this sounds painful, there’s nothing to worry about as you won’t feel any discomfort as you will be under anaesthesia. Any mild cramping that you may see will usually disappear within a day. This is a day-care procedure. You will be out of the hospital within a few hours.

3. Collection of sperms

While your eggs are removed, your partner’s sperms are retrieved to undergo a high-speed wash and spin cycle to find the healthiest ones. Some additional processing may also be done to help choose the best sperms to use. If the husband is unable to provide good sperms in his ejaculate, then a procedure called TESA or PESA or Micro TESE may be done to retrieve sperms surgically from the testes directly.

4. Union of sperm and eggs;

The final phase of the procedure is something that everyone's familiar with — the fusion of the best sperms with the best eggs. This stage is called fertilization. Typically, it takes a couple of hours for a sperm to fertilize an egg.

5. Transfer of embryo into the uterus

The fertilized egg grows into an embryo over a few days – 3 to 5 days. Such an embryo may be frozen for some time and then transferred or in some cases may be transferred in the same cycle as the one in which the eggs were collected. For this embryo transfer, you'll receive another medication that helps to prepare the walls of your uterus to support the embryos that will be transferred back into your uterus, by your doctor, with the help of a catheter. Sometimes, multiple embryos are transferred to increase the probability of successful implantation.

After the transfer of embryos, you will take progesterone supplements to support the uterine lining to help implantation. This completes the IVF cycle.

A blood investigation is then done after 15 days to check if the embryo has implanted and created a successful pregnancy.

Thus, the IVF process is nothing other than the replica of natural reproduction, just that some steps happen outside the body with minor intervention to aid in the process.