What Every Infertility Patient MUST Know About Eggs and Embryos

Healthy eggs and embryos are the key to success in fertility treatment, but most of us know very little about them. Join us to talk about how human embryos grow and implant into the woman’s uterus. How long can embryos remain frozen? What is happening with egg freezing, PGD, PGS, and freezing embryos? What can you do to help your embryos implant during IVF? Our guest today is Dr. Michael Tucker, scientific director for both Georgia Reproductive Specialist (one of our wonderful sponsors) in Atlanta, Alpharetta and Decatur, Georgia and Shady Grove Fertility in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC. Dr. Tucker has been a full-time clinical embryologist since 1983. His list of first’s is impressive: first intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) birth in the United States, first birth resulting from a testicular biopsy in the US, the first birth in the world from frozen donor eggs, and the first pregnancy in the world from immature eggs that were matured after thawing in the IVF lab.

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Hit the Highlights
  • With IVF, how do you know which embryos are more likely to implant into a woman’s uterus and grow into a baby?
  • How successful in single embryo transfer?
  • What advancements have been made in picking the healthiest embryos to transfer back into the woman?
  • What keeps embryos from implanting in infertility treatment?
  • Does it help if a woman has bed rest after the embryo transfer during in vitro fertilization? Does bed rest help embryo implantation?
  • Is there a way to force embryo implantation when the infertility doctor transfers the embryo into the woman’s womb in IVF
  • Does it matter where in the uterus the reproductive endocrinologist transfers the IVF embryos?
  • Failure to implant is most often a problem with an embryo rather than a problem with the woman or her endometrium lining.
  • What are the IVF success rates for Day 1 embryos, Day 3 embryos, and Day 5 or 6 embryos?
  • What is the best day to transfer embryos? What day of development is optimum for embryo transfer?
  • What medium do infertility clinics use to grow embryos for in vitro fertilization?
  • Embryo freezing with fertility treatment.
  • Vitrification vs. standard cryopreservation at fertility clinics.
  • What is the success for thawing embryos in infertility treatment?
  • Does the success of a frozen embryo transfer depend on the cryopreservation or freezing technique used?
  • What are the success rates for low stim in vitro fertilization or natural IVF?
  • What are the advantages to using low stimulation IVF or natural cycle in vitro fertilization?
  • Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis PGD with infertility treatment.
  • Pre-implantation genetic screening PGS with fertility treatment.
  • Egg freezing, oocyte cryopreservation
  • How to know if your infertility clinic has a high quality embryology laboratory?