IVM?

Have you heard of IVM?  This looks like an interesting technique that could help a lot of couples, especially if it indeed is less expensive than IVF. Don't know how good it will turn out to be or not, but here's the article I saw about it.

It involves retrieving the immature eggs earlier and then using the fertility drugs to grow them in a petrie dish.  It would eliminate the chances of OHSS and reduce the meds the woman would have to take. Sounds pretty cool, and they say the success rates are similar to those for full IVF.

Comments

[maggie]

Huh - fascinating idea. The drugs give me the heebie jeebies if I think about it - there's those people who say they can contribute to ovarian cancer - of course, the health professionals say nothing's been proven - but I don't like to think about it. So anything to reduce the amount of needed injectibles is a good thing in my book.

[Aurelia]

I have heard of it actually. It was developed to help women who have PCOS by a Doctor in Montreal. It can sometimes help women who are poor responders to stims, or who have high FSH, whose eggs won't mature properly near the end.
But to reassure Maggie, the injectibles do NOT cause cancer. The reason everyone thought so is because they noticed a high rate of ovarian cancer in women who underwent IVF. It wasn't until they compared a group of women who were infertile (due to say endo like me) and who hadn't taken stims, to those who had taken injectibles, that they realized it was endo or other problems actually causing cancer.
Correlation does not equal causation, really.