IVF and Private Practice

MrsCole

So I caught a few minutes of this show last night and they were doing IVF on a girl and I was just curious from those with experience if that was a pretty accurate representation of how it works.

It seemed really fast to me like they did the ER then they were fertilizing it right away and then she goes "She could be pregnant in less then 24 hours."  

Just curious if thats real life or a condensed version for TV... 

kittylove

It is very much the TV version of things! They do egg retrieval (what you saw on the show) and then they need to fertilize the egg within a period of time (24 hours I think). She would not have had three days, like she did on the show to pick a sperm donor for fertilization. Then after the eggs are fertilized they grow in the lab for 3 or 5 days depending on how well they are growing. 5 day transfers are considered the best but LOTS of labs do 3 day transfers only. At 3 or 5 days the woman comes back in and the fertilized eggs or embryos are transfered into her uterus in the hope that one of them implants and grows to be a baby. At THIS point many women will talk about being "pg until proven otherwise" because there is the large potentintal for being pg, however it is another week or so till a blood test can determine if the procedure worked.

Sorry that was a long explanation, but IVF is complicated, much much more complicated than PP makes it look.

Karey08

thank you for explaining - I had the same question after the show last night.

Mrs.K&C

I didn't see the episode, but as someone who did IVF, I stopped watching that show because of the butcher job they have done on IF treatment storylines...they are totally unrealistic and simply medically wrong. They actually used to have a consultant on staff (like they do on Grey's) to ensure accuracy with medical treatments, terminology, etc., but they stopped using one early on. Last season they did an episode on IVF+ICSI (which is what we did) that was so wrong it was actually offensive. So since I didn't see the episode, all I can say is IVF is a 2 month process, and that's without a sperm or egg donor. As far as fertilization, it's done right away after retrieval. However, the embryos are not transferred until at least 3 days after that, sometimes 5. After transfer you still have to wait at least a week to find out if one of the embryos implanted. I say a week because technically, you can take a PG test about then, but most clinics will have you wait at least 10 days after transfer.