Mini IVF Treatment:

Mini IVF treatment is suited for older couples with slight female infertility problems associated with lowered ovarian reserves and poor egg quality. The purpose of mini IVF is to stimulate the ovaries with mild medication dose and obtain a few but high quality eggs, which will in turn offer you a higher chance of success with treatment.

Mini IVF is a relatively new approach in assisted reproductive technologoies, which aims to obtain a very small number of eggs following a very mild ovarian stimulation protocol. The underlying principle is that, once a patient reaches a certain reproductive age, her oocyte count and quality will fall below optimal levels. When the ovarian reserves as well as the egg quality have fallen below a threshold, exposing the ovaries to high doses of medication will not result in a higher number of eggs, but may in fact compromise the quality of the existing ones. Therefore, mini IVF uses a very mild ovarian stimulation protocol to aim for a very small number, but higher quality oocytes to be used during an IVF cycle.

Mini IVF uses less drugs and injections, and therefore, reduces the likelihood of experiencing any possible side effects of IVF medication. Using a lower dose and less medication also saves you on the cost of IVF treatment as IVF medication can be very expensive.

As North Cyprus IVF, we recommend mini IVF for patients with elevated FSH levels. These patients often do not produce enough good quality eggs to allow Conventional IVF to work efficiently, resulting in a significant increase in failed and cancelled cycles. Mini IVF does not focus on the egg count, but rather, emphasizes the quality of the few eggs that will be produced after ovarian stimulation, therefore, patients who are in their late 30s or early 40s and those with elevated FSH levels (decreased AMH levels) are perfect candidates for mini IVF.

Mini-IVF is one of the answers to the question “How to increase oocyte (egg) quality”? It is usually a method recommended for women who have undergone a number of failed IVF attempts, especially when oocyte quality has been mentioned as a possible cause for the IVF failure. In older age brackets, mini IVF can be combined with methods such as “Cytoplasmic IVF treatment” or “Embryo Banking”. You will find more information on these methods on our blog page, placed on our Home Page.

Even for poor prognosis cases of older women with low ovarian reserve, there is an advantage to mini-IVF over high dose stimulation. Such patients normally produce very few eggs even when subjected to very high doses of stimulation medication. Mini-IVF is just as likely to yield as many eggs (very few, of course) as giving high doses of gonadotropins. But the egg quality is better and they can in fact expect to have a higher chance of success with better quality of eggs. Even in the worst case scenario, even if there are no eggs left and the cycle does not yield any eggs at all, this is discovered after use of much cheaper medication as opposed to spending a fortune.

As with any fertility treatment, designing a treatment protocol necessitates that we see your hormone testing, ultrasound scan, sperm analysis as well as information regarding previous IVF cycles (if applicable). Once we make an assessment, we will be able to recommend a suitable treatment protocol accordingly.

Please contact us for more detail on Mini IVF treatment.