NATURAL CYCLE IVF

Natural Cycle IVF (NC-IVF) is a new option of IVF treatment. It is also called drug-free IVF, which means no fertility medication needed for NC- IVF. It avoids any fertility drugs that would otherwise stimulate ovaries to produce multiple follicles. During the treatment, we will follow up with the development of a naturally selected follicle, and perform egg retrieval prior its ovulation. It is generally considered that the naturally selected egg has the best quality, and it has the greatest potential to become a healthy baby.

Women who choose NC - IVF generally favor its holistic approach, which is closer to the natural conception. It is ideal for women who choose to live a drug-free lifestyle. It is also suitable for women who are less likely to produce multiple eggs even if high doses of fertility medication are used.

NC-IVF is an IVF option for almost all infertility patients. Three groups of women are especially suitable: 1. Young patients with only tubal disease or male factor infertility; 2. Women over 40, with elevated FSH, decrease ovarian reserve, or failed conventional IVF. 3. Patients have history of hormone sensitive cancer, and strong family history of cancer

There are 6 advantages in NC-IVF:

1.      Reduce the side effects and/or complications of fertility drugs. It eliminates the serious complication of Ovarian Hyper-stimulation Syndrome (OHSS).

2.      Reduce the procedure time and much safer during the procedure. Because in NC-IVF we only collect one or two eggs, the procedure time is very short. No I.V. sedation or general anesthesia needed, it reduces the risk and extra cost of general anesthesia. We use local anesthesia for egg retrieval. So patients are able to walk in, walk out, and drive home after the procedure. 

3.      Prevent multiple gestations. Because we only retrieve one egg and transfer one embryo in NC-IVF, the risk of multiple pregnancies is less than 1%. .

4.      Much more affordable. The cost of NC-IVF is less than 50% of conventional IVF. In addition, because it is drug-free cycle, medication alone, patient will save $2000 to $3000 each cycle. More importantly, it completely eliminates the stress and discomfort of daily injections.

5.      Less frequent monitoring. Most patients only need 2-3 office visits during NC-IVF comparing 6-7 monitoring in a conventional IVF cycle.

6.      Not affected by patient’s age, FSH or AMH level, antral follicle counts.  With conventional IVF, patients are often recommended to a donor egg program if patients only have few follicles or with a high FSH level. The cycle is frequently cancelled if less than 3 follicles developed. At Life IVF Center, our goal is to retrieve one good egg, make one good embryo and produce one healthy baby!

There are two limitations for NC-IVF. 1. Because we only have one dominant follicle developed in NC-IVF, we may not able to get an egg or the egg may not develop to a healthy embryo.  2. Because we only have one egg, we don’t have extra embryos to choose or have extra embryo for storage. However, if patient desires to have multiple embryos stored, we can freeze the embryos from the first few cycles before we start embryo transfer.

The fee for one cycle of NC-IVF is $3,950. It covers egg retrieval, IVF with or without ICSI, embryo culture, assisted hatching if necessary, embryo transfer or embryo cryopreservation for one year.