Together. All the way.

A successful IVF treatment is a pregnancy that results in the birth of a healthy child. Many aspects are discussed in order to raise pregnancy rates. An increasingly important parameter to reflect a successful IVF program in today's world of IVF is the time to pregnancy and live birth. In this blog post I will go through some of the critical steps in the IVF procedure and how they can be optimised.

Culture media for IVF can go out of specification during transport for different reasons. This may be detrimental to the product, but not always. In this blog post I will explain what happens to the media when it gets too warm or too cold.

The success of an IVF treatment depends on numerous factors. The patients and the causes of their infertility, the hormone stimulation regimen, culture media, quality and maintenance of equipment and skills of staff are all factors that will influence the outcome. One important factor that can have a detrimental impact on the IVF treatment outcome, but is sometimes overlooked, is the quality of the plastic equipment. 

A question we often get from clinics is for how long time an opened bottle can be used. And if it is possible to aliquot and use the medium until expiry date. In this blog post I make an attempt to answer these and other related questions on safe usage of media.

Successful outcomes in IVF require optimal environmental conditions for gametes and embryos throughout the entire cycle. This can be accomplished by ensuring optimal pH and temperature in the incubators, and that the air in the operating theater and the laboratory is clean and free of VOC’s (volatile organic compounds). An additional step is to ensure that media and contact materials used, support embryo development by being embryo safe and free from toxicity. In this blog post I will guide you through the basics for how to prevent toxicity from entering your culture system. 

The access to time-lapse technology has given a unique possibility to balance metabolic stress against less handling stress during embryo culture. In this blog post I will describe different culture media strategies and the rationale for using specific media for specific applications.

It is common practice to maintain a temperature of 37 oC during all working and culture conditions in the IVF laboratory. This will allow for an optimal environment for the handling and culture of gametes and embryos. In this blog post I will explain why temperature control in the IVF lab is crucial, what equipment to be measured, when to measure and what to do with the results.  

The quality of air within an IVF lab will inevitably affect embryonic development and therefore has a critical impact on IVF success. Our guest blogger Giles Palmer is a senior clinical embryologist who has supported many IVF labs in improving the air quality. In this blog post he shares his valuable recommendations on how to secure the air quality in your IVF lab.

ASRM – the American Society for Reproductive Medicine took place in Baltimore, USA at the end of October. Together, the Vitrolife team covered most of the scientific sessions. The programme as always covered a large variety of topics. The continued interest in the use of time-lapse in the IVF clinic was particularly evident. In this blog post we share some of the highlights in our view.

Temperature, pH and osmolality are some of the most important parameters to take into account during In Vitro embryo culture. In any good quality management system these parameters, amongst others, should be monitored and regulated on a regular basis to ensure optimal culture conditions are maintained. In this blog post I will specifically highlight the importance of pH and its relation to CO₂ measurements for successful results in IVF.