IVF: In Vitro Fertilization
It is now over 33 years since the world’s first birth from IVF, a technique that mimics the process of human fertilisation in the laboratory. Over this period of time, countless couples all over the world have benefited from IVF, the majority of whom would never have been able to have a child without it. While it is now readily and widely available, a high degree of knowledge, skill and attention to detail by the doctor and the laboratory is required before consistently high pregnancy rates can be achieved.
IVF involves removing eggs from the woman’s body, fertilizing them in the laboratory with her partner’s sperm and transferring the resulting embryos back to her uterus between 2 to 6 days later (usually day 3 or 5).
Though this is a simple explanation of IVF-ET, the procedure is a very complex one involving five steps;
- stimulation of the woman’s ovary with hormone injections to produce more eggs
- removing the eggs from the body (egg collection procedure)
- obtaining the partner’s semen(sperm)
- fertilization of the eggs in the laboratory
- placing the embryos in the uterus (embryo transfer procedure)
- using further medications to strengthen the uterus (womb) until the day of the pregnancy test.
If there are extra embryos left after the embryo transfer procedure, they are frozen and used at a later stage to attempt pregnancy again.
Since the first IVF-ET carried out in 1978 over four million babies have been born using this method. It is an effective treatment for almost all causes of infertility. There is no increase in the risk of abnormality of the baby compared to a natural conception.
