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What is involved in IVF treatment?

13 October 2009
Conventional or standard IVF treatment involves the administration of fertility drugs, monitoring of the cycle, collection of eggs, mixing eggs and sperm together outside the woman’s body in a culture dish or test-tube. Any resulting embryos are left to grow and the best 2-3 embryos are then transferred into the woman’s womb. Any remaining embryos of good quality may then be frozen for future use. In the United Kingdom a maximum of three embryos are replaced.
IVF cycle. The diagram below summarises the IVF cycle.

IVF Procedure

The original indication for IVF was tubal damage, but it is now used for a wide range of disorders such as unexplained infertility, endometriosis, male factor infertility, failure to conceive after 12 cycles of successful ovulation induction, failure to conceive after 6 cycles of intrauterine insemination etc.
IVF cycle consists of several steps over an interval of 4-6 weeks and start when a woman begins taking drugs to stimulate her ovaries to produce eggs, monitoring progress by ultrasound scan and blood tests, collecting eggs, collecting man’s sperm, fertilizing the eggs, transferring the embryo and end by the pregnancy test.

Age group

Younger than 35

35-37

38-40

41-42

Over 42

No IVF cycles started

100

100

100

100

100

No Egg collections

92

88

85

81

78

No Embryo transfers

86

82

78

71

64

No pregnancies

43

36

27

18

8

No Live births

37

29

20

11

4