Infertility Treatment Clinics Support

An infertility treatment clinic should be chosen according to your own requirements and availability. Nowadays you can expect great service from most infertility treatment centers that have online and phone support for patients and clients thanks to the medical answering service costs, which are affordable to these clinics.

People who answer the calls will be prepared to also answer all your questions and requirements; these are specially trained people that respond clearly and quickly. These medical answering services are provided by different companies and they help delivering messages to the doctors immediately via the preferred method of their choice.

For doctors, of course, this is a great choice, since patients will always have a response. No more waiting for the phone to ring and ring waiting to reach your infertility clinic. All the calls are answered on the first ring thanks to voicemail, and they can be classified in many ways. If the call is of urgency you will be able to talk with the operator directly who will be capable of helping you.

Communications are very important, and infertility clinics understand that. The interaction between doctor-patient must be fluid to ensure success in the many steps of this exciting experience.

IVF versus IVM

Standard IVF Treatments

- Once a day for 10 days prior to the start of her period, a woman injects herself with an antagonist hormone that down-regulates her ovaries so that they will respond better to the coming stimulation.

- On Day 2 or 3 of her period, a woman must have two daily injections for a week to 10 days of a follicle-stimulating hormone to spur the production of eggs.

- By the 10th day, the follicles enlarge, indicating the maturing eggs. At this point the woman gets an injection of human chorionic gonadotropin, which triggers the egg ovulation process but fertility doctors retrieve the eggs for IVF 36 hours later prior to them being released naturally.

- On average, this standard IVF protocol yields 10 mature eggs.

What it costs

At McGill, one cycle of IVF costs $4,500 plus the drugs, which add at minimum $2,500 per cycle, depending on the age of woman and amount needed. Treatments can easily run more than $7,000.

In Vitro Maturation

- The patient contacts the clinic on Day 3 of her menstrual cycle and undergoes an ultrasound, where doctors count the number of follicles present. If there are at least 10 follicles, where the eggs reside, visible in her ovaries, a second ultrasound is scheduled.

- On Day 8 of the cycle, doctors recount the follicles and check the lining of the uterus to ensure it is at least 6 mm thick if an embryo is to be implanted. If the count holds up, the patient is given an injection to trigger the ovulation process.

- About 36 hours later, doctors collect the immature eggs from the woman's ovaries.

- The immature eggs are then submerged in a mineral-rich liquid medium that mimics the fluid of the ovarian follicles and are placed in an incubator. Most eggs mature within 24 to 48 hours.

- Mature eggs can be fertilized, or, as part of the McGill clinical trial, frozen.

What it yields

- On average, doctors can collect an average of 10 immature eggs from women with polycystic ovaries (who have abnormally high follicle counts). Data from Korea suggest that IVM on other women can yield one mature egg and three to five immature eggs.

What it costs

At McGill, one IVM cycle costs $3,975 for Canadian residents.

Source: Dr. Ri-Cheng Chian, McGill University Health Centre, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology