A simple guide to infertility treatment

Step 1: Turn off your own hormones

For two weeks:

Lucrin injection	or	Synarel nasal spray

Step 2: Fertility drugs to stimulate your ovaries

Normally, only one egg will develop. When IVF drugs are given, all of the available eggs will develop:

	Natural (Unstimulated)
	IVF (Stimulated)

Step 3: Day 0: Egg collection

Eggs are collected using local anaesthetic and intravenous sedation:

Sperm are collected the same day

Step 4: The same day: Eggs and sperm are put together

IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation)	or	ICSI (IntraCytoplasmic Sperm Injection)

Step 5: The next day, Day 1: Have they fertilised?

Step 6: Day 2: Check growing embryos and transfer

	Sometimes "spare" embryos can be frozen
An embryo is transferred in a gentle procedure similar to a Pap smear

After this….

Wait (for 2-3 weeks), hope, rest, go about your normal routine and have treatment to keep your hormone levels high.

Good things about IVF A chance to get pregnant

- Female age <35: 30-40% pregnancy per cycle
- Female age 35-39: 25-30% pregnancy per cycle
- Female age 40+: 15-25% pregnancy per cycle

Drawbacks of IVF

Cost (See Costs of Treatment)

Repeated hormone injections

Invasive procedures

Inconvenience

Psychological stress

Side-effects of treatment:

- Ovarian swelling and fluid retention. This can occasionally be serious and affects 1% of our patients
- Serious infection around the ovaries (rare)

Long-term effects on mother and child.

- At present, IVF is not known to have any long-term effects on the mother.
- IVF babies may be at greater risk of premature birth and may have a slightly higher risk of heart disease and cerebral palsy.

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