IVF vs ICSI
There are so many terms bandied around when you’re going through fertility treatment, most of which I had never heard of until we were knees deep in the process. Most people have heard of IVF and have some concept of what it involves, but other types of treatment for infertility are less well known. We had ICSI rather than standard IVF for our treatment; here I’ll summarise what each approach involves and why one may be chosen over the other.
- IVF: In-Vitro Fertilisation — The name literally means fertilisation outside of the body. In a fresh cycle of IVF, a woman’s ovaries are stimulated with hormones to produce as many eggs as possible. These eggs are extracted from the ovaries when mature and the harvested eggs and the male partner’s sperm are then put into a petri dish and left to fertilise on their own.
- ICSI: Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection — Similarly to IVF, a woman’s ovaries are stimulated to produce mature eggs. This time however, rather than leaving the eggs and sperm together to fertilise, one sperm is selected in the lab and injected directly into the egg to fertilise it. In both approaches, the fertilised egg is then left to hopefully develop into a viable embryo for transfer back into the uterus.
IVF is the go-to treatment for infertility and is useful for couples with a variety of fertility issues. ICSI tends to be used if there is a specific issue with sperm, for example a low count or low motility, as these sperm are less likely to be able to reach and fertilise the eggs on their own. We also came across testicular extraction when researching for our treatment online, which, as the name suggests, is when sperm is collected surgically directly from the testicles. This can be useful if sperm count is extremely low, or nothing, due to a previous vasectomy, or a variety of other health conditions.
