What is emergency in vitro fertilization (IVF)?

Emergency in vitro fertilization is the most commonly used and the most mature technology that we offer patients seeking fertility preservation. Emergency in vitro fertilization involves several steps. The first step involves the stimulation of the patient’s ovaries with fertility drugs, which bring the ovaries to the point where they are going to release a number of eggs rather than the single egg that’s ordinarily released each month.

Once the follicles which contain the eggs reach maturity, a second medication is administered to the patient, which triggers ovulation roughly 36 hours later. Just prior to the point in time when the eggs would be released inside the patient’s body, they’re harvested in an outpatient procedure which is carried out under what’s called conscious sedation; the patient does not have to go to an operating room, does not have a major operation, but under sedation, which is administered intravenously, in a procedure that takes roughly 15 minutes, through the vagina under ultrasound guidance using a needle, the eggs are removed from the ovaries one by one. Once the eggs have been harvested, sometime in the next several hours they are fertilized in the laboratory with the patient’s mate’s sperm. This leads to the creation of embryos, which are followed ordinarily, for a period of 24 hours. And at that point, the embryos are frozen. They are stored in liquid nitrogen, and as far as we know, these embryos can be maintained in this storage state for many years. At that point, the patient can move on, can have her cancer treated, and once she’s cured, she can explore possibly having the embryos, which have been stored, thawed and put back into her body in order to initiate a pregnancy.