Infertility Treatments

The treatments we offer are HIGHLY individualized and personalized.  The options for treatment therefore vary according to each person’s findings.  These may include:

• Timed Intrauterine Insemination (IUI)
• Superovulation / IUI
• In-vitro Fertilization (IVF)
• IVF with Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)

Timed Intrauterine Insemination (IUI)

Some of our patients are candidates for timed IUI. This involves accurately determining the day of ovulation and coming to the office for the IUI procedure.  Partner or donor sperm would be processed in our laboratory, drawn up into a thin catheter, and inserted into the uterus.  The sperm is then injected into the fallopian tubes with the anticipation the sperm will fertilize the egg.

Superovulation / IUI

The patient is placed on injectable fertility medications to stimulate the development of more than one egg.  When she ovulates multiple eggs, she undergoes IUI.  This increases the odds of conception over timed IUI because the sperm will have multiple egg “targets” to potentially fertilize compared to the one egg the woman ovulates without fertility drugs.

In-vitro Fertilization (IVF)

In a manner similar to superovulation, the woman uses injectable fertility drugs to stimulate the development of multiple eggs.  However, those eggs are then taken out of her body (through her vagina under ultrasound guidance under intravenous anesthesia), fertilized in the laboratory to create embryos, and one or more of the resulting embryos are gently placed in the uterus (embryo transfer) several days later.  Embryos are generally transferred to the uterus three or five days after egg retrieval (day 3 = embryo transfer; day 5 = blastocyst transfer), depending on each woman’s individual circumstances.  If sperm quantity/quality is poor, we inject sperm directly into the egg(s) to induce fertilization; this is called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).  IVF is the most advanced and usually the most successful therapy available to help someone achieve a pregnancy.

IVF with Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)

Some women/couples are candidates for PGD.  PGD involves removing one cell from each embryo created through IVF and analyzing the cell for genetic abnormalities.  Only the embryos deemed genetically normal are considered for subsequent embryo transfer.  Indications for PGD include, and are not limited to, carriers of disorders such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease, and Tay-Sachs, as well as those who prefer to “gender select” (choose the sex of their offspring).

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