Team Miracle took its name from the fact that IVF treatment is a miracle for those needing assisted reproduction. The urge to carry a child can be an overwhelming instinct for a woman, and if conception proves elusive then IVF really is a miracle process.

However, over the years of fertility medicine development, more and more advantages of IVF have become apparent; some more obvious than others. We all know that IVF involves mixing the sperm and the egg together to create an embryo if conception is proving difficult, but what of the other reasons for having IVF? We’ve compiled a list of some of the advantages that you may not know much about.

  1. It can help women who have blocked fallopian tubes. IVF represents the best chance for these women of having a baby using their own eggs.
  2. Women who are older, or those with low ovarian reserves, benefit enormously from IVF. With the focus on quality rather than quantity, it can significantly increase their chances of a successful pregnancy.
  3. It can help in a situation where there is male infertility. At Cyprus IVF Centre, our embryologists inject the sperm straight into the egg via the ICSI process. This boosts the chances of a healthy embryo developing. In certain cases of severe male factor infertility, donor sperm can be used.
  4. Polycystic ovary syndrome can have the devastating side effect of making a woman infertile from a young age. IVF treatment has been shown to be very successful in these situations because it facilitates conception where the body may not be able to. our doctors and Team Miracle have a large number of PCOS patients every year and a special IVF treatment protocol has been created to maximise the chance of success.
  5. The same is true of endometriosis. With the advent of IVF, disease of the reproductive system no longer means no children.
  6. There are many women who suffer with premature ovarian failure. Difficult to predict and with disastrous consequences for those trying to conceive, having IVF with donor eggs can be a lifeline.
  7. IVF has been used for a very long time and has a very safe track record. In addition to this, the Cyprus IVF Centre has world class clinical facilities and a hugely skilled and experienced team dedicated to the best possible pregnancy success rates.
  8. It is now possible for single women and same-sex couples to have their own biological children.
  9. In the event of your embryos remaining unused, they can be frozen and used in a future cycle, perhaps to have a sibling for your first Team Miracle baby.
  10. But perhaps one of the most important advantages to IVF is the ability to screen embryos for inherited diseases. If you know that you are a carrier of a genetic disorder such as muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and Huntingdon’s disease then using IVF with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a very reliable way of ensuring that the baby conceived will not suffer from these disorders. As well as reducing the incidence of these diseases, screening means that families are spared the heartache and distress that can come from having a heavily disabled child.
  11.  Pre-genetic screening (PGS) screens for, and therefore avoids, chromosomal abnormalities such as Down’s syndrome.
  12.  Chromosome screening techniques such as PGD and PGS can be used to select the gender of your future baby either for family balancing or simply personal preference.
  13. Confirmation of fertilisation as a result of IVF. This may seem a small point, however it’s a big advantage of having IVF. Some women are told that their poor fertility is ‘idiopathic’, or in other words, unknown. Which can obviously be frustrating. It might be that the egg and sperm are not interacting correctly, which prevents an embryo from being created. This is known as a ‘failed fertilisation’. It’s a hard thing to hear, but it can also give some answers as to why a woman has not fallen pregnant naturally. With IVF treatment in Cyprus, the ICSI method introduces the sperm directly into the egg as the method of fertilisation, overcoming issues which may previously have been deemed as “unexplained infertility”.
  14.  Using other methods for fertilising the egg means that men with a low sperm count, or those that have had a vasectomy, can still have a child which is biologically theirs.
  15.  The use of IVF treatment has significantly reduced the amount of women having surgery on their fallopian tubes. It is estimated that there has been an almost 50% reduction in cases.

It wouldn’t be right to leave this piece without mentioning what some might see as disadvantages of IVF:

a) The cost. Luckily that’s not so much an issue here with Team Miracle at Cyprus IVF Centre because our treatment is substantially cheaper than in the UK.
b) Multiple births. These lead to higher risks for mother and babies. However, with single embryo transfer and blastocyst transfer both becoming increasingly popular, this is no longer such an issue. In fact, we often have patients contacting us because they specifically want to have twins!
c) The final one is ethical rather than actual. Sometimes, not all of the embryos are used and some may view this as a waste of life. However, at Cyprus IVF Centre you always have the option to freeze leftover embryos so they are not just discarded.

Nevertheless, if you take these three objections and compare them to the fifteen advantages listed above, there really are no parallels to be drawn. IVF is, and has always been, a miracle process.