Fertility: S01 E04 – NCRM Fertility Fair – The IVF Process – Megan Jacklin

My name is Megan. I’m the IVF nurse coordinator here at NCRM. Today I’m talking to patients about the IVF process so in vitro fertilization. What do they need to do to get to get started? If it would be a good candidate for IVF? So for instance, if somebody had tubal problems or tubal blockage is that would be a very good candidate for IVF otherwise we can try other solutions first before we jump to that route. Usually when patients are advanced maternal age, anything over 35 years, they are also a good candidate for IVF because we can weed out genetic disorders such as down syndrome through pgs testing. The first step of course is meeting with the physician to go over the plan and why they would need IVF for any further testing as far as hormones or different kind of diagnostic testing to look inside the uterus or look inside the tubes. The second test is to meet with me where I review their calendar and their schedule of medications. Most of the injections are self-administered and their subcutaneous either in the fatty tissue of the body. The third step is to actually do egg retrieval which is the anesthesia procedure so the patient is asleep for about 30 minutes and that’s when we actually remove the eggs. They wake up and recover. It’ all an in-house process. And then we go to the lab part of it, which is the insemination with their partner’s or donor sperm. We make embryos at that point and watch them grow for about five to six days if they decided to do genetic testing at that point we do a biopsy of the cell and those fits an offer genetic testing once we get results back then the doctor goes over the results with the patient and then we set up for frozen embryo transfer which is putting the embryo back into the patient. I hope to meet you and continue your journey in creating a family here at NCRM.