IVF/ICSI
With Partner's Sperm

One of the first steps is to perform tests and exams. Your physician needs them to assess your clinical status. The exams may include a gynaecological ultrasound, hormone tests, infectious disease screening or a sperm count, among others.

After assessing the results, your physician will decide which treatment is most appropriate to your diagnosis and we will be able to start your treatment at any time suitable to you.

If you undergo IVF or ICSI, there will be a four-to-five-week period between the start of treatment and your pregnancy test.

The treatment begins with ovarian stimulation to make your ovaries produce more than one egg. Without medication, a woman’s ovary releases one egg (a potential embryo) in each cycle. In IVF or ICSI, the ideal is for us to be able to retrieve several eggs in the same cycle so that more embryos can be created in the lab. This is why stimulation is necessary.

Your ovaries will be stimulated through hormone injections. There are different protocols for ovarian stimulation and your physician will decide which one is best for you.

During ovarian stimulation (lasting an average of 10 days) we will need you to visit our clinic two or three times so that the growth of your follicles (small sacs where your eggs grow) can be monitored by ultrasound. Your protocol may be adjusted at any time and your hormone dosages may be changed. This ultrasound monitoring is therefore essential to the success of your treatment.

As soon as your follicles reach the ideal size, we will schedule your egg collection. This procedure is performed in an operating theatre under anaesthesia and is therefore not painful.

The retrieved eggs are then taken to the lab where they will be stored under conditions similar to those of the human body. These conditions are perfect for fertilisation and subsequent development of the resulting embryos.

It will not take you more than around three hours to recover from the procedure on the day of your egg collection and you can go back to your daily routine as soon as you leave the clinic (with any exceptions indicated by your physician).

On the day of your egg collection, your partner will be asked to provide a sperm sample so that we can combine your eggs and his sperm in the lab. The sample is provided by masturbation in the total privacy of a special room for that purpose.

In very special cases in which it is not possible to collect sperm from ejaculate (e.g. azoospermia, inability to ejaculate), it may be necessary to collect sperm directly from the testicular tissue in a biopsy.

After assessing your partner’s sample, our embryologists will use lab techniques to select the sperm cells with the best motility and morphology. There are a number of techniques to improve sperm samples and our embryologists will make sure that they choose the most appropriate one for you.

The eggs will be fertilised with the selected sperm in the lab on the same day of your egg collection. We will use one of two techniques to fertilise your eggs:

• In vitro fertilisation (IVF)

  In this technique, we simply put your eggs together with the right quantity of selected sperm so that fertilisation can take place. This is the classic, physiologically most natural fertilisation method as it involves little handling of your cells. The sperm cells will be responsible for finding and penetrating the eggs to fertilise them.

• Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI)

  In certain cases, in which it is not possible to perform IVF, the chosen technique is ICSI. A sperm cell is selected for each egg and injected into it. We use special, high-precision equipment (microscopes, microinjectors and microneedles) for this procedure to ensure that we achieve good fertilisation rates.

The day after your egg collection, our team of embryologists will contact you with news about your treatment. This is when you will find out how many embryos will be developing over the next few days. During this culture period, which may vary from two to five days, your embryos will be safe in our lab and our embryologists will ensure that they have the ideal conditions for their development.

The embryologists will decide on the best day to schedule the transfer of your embryo(s) to the uterus. This decision will depend not only on the quantity but also the quality of the embryos. The embryologists will conduct a careful assessment of each embryo every day to ensure that the best ones are chosen on the day of your embryo transfer.

While your embryos are being cultured in the lab, your doctor will prescribe you medication to help prepare your uterus to receive the embryos. It is important for you to keep taking this medication until your physician or one of our nurses tells you otherwise.

On the day of your embryo transfer, our embryologists will inform you on how many good-quality embryos you have. If there are more good-quality embryos than you want to transfer, our lab team will cryopreserve them for future use (vitrification freezing method). Cryopreserved embryos remain intact and at the same stage of development until they are thawed. Around 95% of embryos are totally unaffected by this freezing and thawing process.

At AVA Clinic, you will be given the choice of transferring one or two embryos. However, we will probably advise you on the ideal number to transfer in order to achieve a healthy pregnancy and delivery.

The transfer procedure is performed in the operating theatre. No anaesthesia is a necessity in this case, as it is practically pain-free, much like a gynaecological examination. The embryos are transferred to your uterus via the cervix by means of a very thin catheter. With the aid of an ultrasound probe, your embryos are placed directly in the place where they should implant to result in a pregnancy.

Today’s the day! After what we know is a difficult wait, it’s time to do the long-awaited pregnancy test. The test is normally conducted about two weeks after your egg collection. You will have to take a blood test to confirm your pregnancy. You can take the test in the comfort of the AVA Clinic though, if this is not convenient, you can do it at any lab testing facility.

The AVA Clinic team wishes you the best of luck with your treatment. And don’t forget that you can contact us at any time if you have any questions.