Many causes of infertility can be treated with in vitro fertilization.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) was first developed in the 1970’s to help women with severely damaged tubes to conceive. Since then, IVF has also been used to help couples with endometriosis, semen abnormalities, and unexplained infertility to have children. The success of IVF has increased over the years, as more couples have been seeking this treatment.

What happens in an in-vitro fertilization cycle?
In the simplest of terms, IVF is the fertilization of an egg outside of the body. Eggs are removed from a woman’s body, fertilized with sperm in our laboratory, and then placed back into the woman’s uterus in the hope of achieving a viable pregnancy.

However, there are a number of steps to the process, and for patients it involves a series of medications, retrieval of eggs from the female partner, and transfer of embryos into the uterus. Mature eggs are removed from the ovaries using a needle. Our embryology lab then inseminates the eggs and keeps them in a special incubator to develop. Three or five days later, the dividing embryos are placed into the uterus using a catheter designed for this procedure. This is a simple outpatient procedure, though patients remain in the clinic for 30 minutes afterwards, and are discouraged from heavy lifting and strenuous activities, until their pregnancy test, usually 10 days later.

Success Rates
The success of an in vitro fertilization procedure depends upon the age of the female partner, the diagnosis, and (especially for women over 35) the FSH value (“Follicle-Stimulating Hormone”) on the third day of the menstrual cycle. Your physician will give you an estimate of your individual chance of success.

Intracytoplasmic Injection of Sperm (ICSI)
ICSI (pronounced ick-see) is a technique performed when information suggests that normal insemination with sperm may fail, resulting in no or fewer fertilized eggs available for transfer. This can happen when semen parameters are abnormal, or when patients have had a previous IVF cycle with poor or no fertilization.

ICSI utilized an individual sperm which is inserted directly into an egg using an injection needle rather than multiple sperm placed in the same dish with an egg. The first successful pregnancies using ICSI were reported in 1992. Pacific NW Fertility’s embryology team has been successfully using the ICSI technique since 1994.

Blastocyst and Extended Culture
Traditionally, embryos have been transferred to the uterus on the second or third day of development after in vitro fertilization. Embryos that survive after five to six days of growth are called blastocysts and are usually stronger and healthier. Blastocyst culture is the latest development in helping increase implantation rates while minimizing multiple births. It is especially important in helping patients minimize the various obstetrical complications that may arise from multiple pregnancies and helps couples avoid having to make difficult personal and ethical decisions regarding selective reduction.

Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)
There is a one in four chance of passing a genetic disorder on to a child if both partners carry the same recessive gene disorder, and a one in two chance if either carries a dominant genetic disorder. More than 200 serious genetic disorders could potentially be prevented by using PGD to screen for affected embryos that carry or are at risk for diseases such as Cystic Fibrosis, Hemophilia, Neurofibromatosis, Duchene Muscular Dystrophy, and Sickle Cell Anemia. PGD involves removing one cell from each embryo created during the IVF procedure and testing for abnormal genes, thereby allowing the identification of embryos with healthy cells.

Preserving High Quality Embryos for Future Use
Many embryos may be created in an IVF cycle. Upon deciding on the appropriate number of embryos to transfer, Pacific NW Fertility gives patients the option of cryopreserving or freezing any of the remaining high quality embryos for future use. Due to the selection criteria of what is frozen, typically 80 – 90% of the embryos will survive the freeze-thaw process and each embryo has a 20 – 30% chance of implanting and becoming a baby. The time an embryo can remain frozen undamaged appears to be indefinite. We offer options for disposition of excess embryos.