The IVF laboratoryโs quality is one of the most important things to consider when selecting a fertility clinic. Whether your chosen clinic carries out the medical procedures themselves at an in-house IVF lab or outsources them to another laboratory, they should be able to provide you with the details of the laboratoryโs operation.
Clearly, knowing what to look for and the right questions to ask about the IVF lab can help ensure you get the best fertility treatment possible.
Coastal Fertility Medical Center, California is a top IVF care facility in the industry, thanks to our well-equipped, state-of-the-art laboratory and highly experienced embryologists. Letโs look at how you can find the perfect IVF lab for yourself.
To start with, what is an IVF lab?
The IVF process timeline spans a few weeks.
After the patient has taken the necessary fertility medications and undergone the egg retrieval procedure, the focus of the treatment cycle shifts to the clinicโs laboratory.
This is where the โactual IVFโ procedures take place.
It is where fertilization occurs, where embryos are nurtured prior to transfer, and where complex medical procedures, such as genetic testing, assisted hatching, and ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) are done.
Hence, the success of a treatment cycle depends significantly on the quality of the laboratory and the equipments being used. A complete-service lab will be able to retrieve and store your sperm, eggs, or embryos.
What makes a fertility clinic and an IVF laboratory great?
The above discussion raises a necessary question. What makes an IVF lab stand out?
There are many things that differentiate an exceptional laboratory from an average one. When choosing a fertility clinic for your IVF, ask and consider the following factors about the lab.
1. Do they have highly experienced and certified lab director and clinic staff
The fertility experts and technicians who will be handling your eggs, sperm, or embryos should have years of valuable experience as the clinical specialist carrying out the treatment.
Assisted reproductive technologies (ART for short) are technically complex procedures that require a high level of expertise from everyone involved.
At Coastal Fertility, we have a full-time lab director who oversees the IVF procedures from start to finish.
As you can see, itโs important to ask the clinic whether experts are trained and board-certified. Also find out
- Who is running the lab?
- What kind of qualifications they have?
- Is thereโs any ongoing training and certification process for their lab technicians?
2. Up-to-date lab protocols and processes
The method used for embryo incubation and storage has a big impact on how the embryos will develop.
An ideal IVF laboratory must have strict protocols that govern everything that takes place there. Here are some of the questions you need to ask if you are looking to undergo IVF at a fertility clinic in Irvine, California.
- How is embryo development monitored?
- Does the laboratory follow the practices?
- What standards are in place to ensure quality in all their tasks?
- How does the lab make sure of the integrity of the patientโs genetic material?
- Do they keep up to date with studies on fertility medicine and adjust their operations based on the recent findings in embryology?
3. Top-grade equipment and supplies needed and maintained at the IVF clinic lab
An IVF lab can only be as good as the equipment present as embryology involves the use of highly sophisticated biomedical tools.
A well-equipped laboratory will have various types of powerful microscopes, embryo incubators, and microtools for IVF. Besides, an embryo needs environmental controls at every stage of development to grow appropriately.
To know about these things, ask the fertility clinic:
- What kind of incubators, culture media, and apparatus does the lab use?
- How have they been tested to determine their impact on developing embryos?
- You should also ask if the lab offers advanced options, such as time-lapse photography incubators.
- If the answer is yes, ask if it can incubate embryos up to the blastocyst stage.
4. High-quality air filtration system
The laboratoryโs air quality has a huge impact on the viability and health of developing embryos. Contaminants can cause severe harm, and air impurities such as VOC (volatile organic compounds), microbes, or perfume can interfere with the development of an embryo.
- Ask if the embryology laboratory is certified as a clean room, and if yes, to what degree?
- It would also help if you ask about the ventilating, heating, and air conditioning systems used in the lab.
- What type of filters is installed in the IVF lab? Charcoal and high-efficiency particulate units are the best air filters to use in an embryology lab.
- Find out how often the air circulates. Ideally, the units should be able to generate enough air pressure so that the air in the embryology lab can be replaced at least 20 times in one hour.
5. Careful light and temperature control
Growing embryos are highly sensitive to changes in ambient light and temperature and these two factors are essential for your IVF success.
Enquire if the laboratory has any measures in place to control the embryosโ environment during incubation and handling.
Before you embark on your IVF journey
Finding the right IVF laboratory can significantly raise your odds of having a successful fertility treatment. Hence, do not hesitate to discuss and ask questions about the laboratory.
We know that itโs not easy to evaluate the quality of an IVF lab for someone who does not have a medical background or knowledge. The highly sophisticated science and techniques used can be hard to understand.
But remember that you donโt need to be well-versed in assisted reproductive technology before you can tell whether or not an IVF laboratory is ideal for your fertility treatment.
IVF is a huge financial and time commitment, and at Coastal Fertility Medical Center, we believe that every patient deserves the best care possible at each stage of treatment.
If you have more questions about IVF labs or want to know how we can help you achieve your parenthood dreams, simply reach us to schedule a consultation.
You can also have a chat with us to get answers to any questions you may have.
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