What Is Egg Retrieval?
During a woman's reproductive cycle, eggs develop in follicles in the ovaries. During ovulation, an egg is released, and the woman has the potential to become pregnant. However, patients struggling with infertility or patients wishing to preserve their fertility may choose to undergo egg retrieval.
During egg retrieval at Los Angeles Reproductive Center, your fertility doctor will use a long thin needle to go through the wall of the vagina and into the ovary, collecting mature eggs from the follicle. This process is a necessary step for reproductive treatments such as IVF, egg freezing, embryo freezing, egg donation, and surrogacy.
Egg Retrieval Is a Vital Part of Many Fertility Treatments
In Vitro Fertilization
If you are undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF), egg retrieval is one of the steps performed before an embryo is even created. Following retrieval, the mature eggs are fertilized using sperm from the father or a donor. After fertilization, the embryos develop in our lab, where our doctors and embryologists will monitor their development.
Once the embryos have developed, the next step in IVF is embryo transfer. During embryo transfer, one or more embryos are placed in the uterus, where they will hopefully implant and continue to develop throughout pregnancy.
Egg or Embryo Freezing
Our clinics in Bakersfield and Encino, CA, also offer egg and embryo freezing for fertility preservation. As with IVF, egg retrieval is one of the first procedures in the treatment timeline. Once the eggs are collected, they are frozen for future use.
If patients wish to create embryos, the eggs are fertilized, and the resulting embryos are frozen. This is often done during IVF when multiple embryos are created, but it is also used to protect against future reproductive issues.
Egg Retrieval Timeline
Egg retrieval is performed at our clinics in Bakersfield and Encino, CA, using IV sedation for optimal patient comfort.
Have questions about the egg retrieval process?
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Both doctors we saw and all the staff were very professional, lovely to interact with and we felt like they cared for us during the whole process. We were luckily to find such a wonderful clinic and blessed with two beautiful children. Thank you so much
View on GoogleI can't complain about Dr Kalan. He was very sweet, responsive, knowledgeable, and caring about his work and his patients. If there was a problem he wanted to be thorough and would talk to you about any additional testing he recommended to be done. He spoke in ways that helped me understand things. He even gave me a call after my baby was born to see how we were doing.
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