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IVF: what you need to know
On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown became living proof that conception could take place in a test tube. Many thousands of babies later, In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) is almost routine, and it’s easy to assume that it provides the answer to all fertility problems.
The percentage of IVF treatment cycles which result in a birth is rising, according to the human fertilisation and embryology authority, which said between April 2000 and March 2001, 21.8% of IVF treatment cycles resulted in a birth, compared with 19.5% in 1998-99. That said, it's important to realise that IVF fails more often that it succeeds. Success rates do depend on your age however, and in 2004 were 28.1% for women under 35 years old, 21.9% for women aged 35-39 years, 17.5% for women aged 38-39 years, 10.4% for women aged 40-42 years, 4.2% for women aged 43-44 years and 1.4% for women aged over 44. Women over the age of 40 may therefore be advised to use donated eggs from a younger woman.
Success rates vary from clinic to clinic, so phone clinics in your area and ask for their most recent statistics for your age group and type of treatment. This may be IVF using standard insemination technique (which is described later) or it might be IVF using Intra-cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). ICSI is used for sperm problems and the embryologist injects an individual sperm into the ‘heart’ of each egg, bypassing natural fertilization.
At the same time ask about the clinic’s frozen embryo transfer programme. A good programme will increase your chance of getting pregnant with each stimulated cycle of treatment.
What is IVF?
Basically IVF involves collecting eggs from the ovary, putting them together with sperm in a dish and, if those sperms fertilise an egg, putting the embryo or embryos that result into the womb.
The treatment
Every month women prepare several eggs in their ovaries, but usually only one is chosen by the body to be released into the fallopian tubes. With Natural Cycle IVF, the one egg your body produces is collected and fertilised, to avoid the side effects of drugs and prevent multiple pregnancy. As there is often a problem with natural egg production, however, it is more usual to stimulate the ovaries with drugs to produce more than one egg. This gives a better chance of collecting at least one which is healthy.
Combinations of drugs given by injection are used to stimulate egg production over a period of two to five weeks. One type of drug (gonadotropin releasing hormone analogue) suppresses your natural hormones to control your ovulation cycle, while another type of drug (a gonadotropin) acts on the ovaries so they produce more eggs than normal. On the day after the last injection of gonadotrophins, an injection of the hormone hCG (human Chorionic Gonadotrophin) is given. This matures the eggs, which should be ready for collection about 35 hours later (this may vary slightly between clinics).
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Created: 11/12/2000 Updated: 05/10/2007
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