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One evening, my friend Gudrun called, telling me that she had been diagnosed with PCO syndrome by her gynecologist. She asked me to exactly explain the disorder to her.

Gudrun is a healthy woman in her early 30s. She has taken the pill for several years for contraceptive purposes and to regulate her somewhat irregular menstrual cycle. Now that she has met Mr. Right and they wish to start a family, she has stopped taking the pill. But nothing happened so far – no menstrual bleeding and no pregnancy occurred. At first, Gudrun took a wait-and-see attitude. After 4 months, she went to see her gynecologist and was diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). “But I have a healthy lifestyle with a balanced diet and sufficient exercise,” says Gudrun. She had used the Internet to learn more about possible causes. Now she was at a loss what to do. She needed a personal clarification and remembered that I work for a fertility center.
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| A syndrome with a complex nature as the potential cause of the involuntary childlessness

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Doctors, medical assistants and embryologists in the laboratory, IT department, hygiene specialists, Info Center etc. We, as a team at the IVF Centers Prof. Zech dedicate our entire know-how and passion to helping infertile couples achieve a pregnancy with the help of assisted reproductive technology (ART).

In many cases, the patients are able to deliver the good news to us that their pregnancy test had come back positive and, later on, fetal heartbeat could be detected via ultrasound.
We particularly enjoy receiving cards or letters from happy parents in which they express their gratitude after the birth of their baby.

However, there are couples who get no chance of experiencing this kind of happiness. Artikel lesen

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Some couples with an unfulfilled desire to have a child have a long way to go until they have achieved their goal of starting a family – inseminations, hormonal treatments used for ‘artificial insemination’, IVF therapies, cryo cycles, etc. Some couples, however, need a “Plan B”: An egg donation.

With donated oocytes, these couples are able to realize their dream of having a child. The donated oocyte is inseminated by the husband’s sperm. Subsequently, the embryo is transferred to his partner’s womb which has been prepared accordingly. If everything works, she will give birth to a baby nine months later.

The woman delivering the baby is the child’s mother, from a “biological” and social point of view. However she is not the child’s genetic mother. I know from conversations I have had with patients that many egg-recipients are concerned with the following question:

“I am worried that I might not love the child just as much as if it was conceived with my own eggs?”
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Study on the relationship between mother and child after IVF treatment using donated eggs

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The stage of hormonal stimulation (ovarian stimulation) is an exciting time. Daily injections are required and each ultrasound scan is anticipated with great excitement. What our patients want to know is:

“How many follicles can be identified?
Do all the follicles continue to grow?
How many large and probably mature follicles were produced?”

Hormone doses and therapy protocols are determined on an individual basis in order to achieve the best possible outcome.
It is a much earlier point in time that decides how many follicles will develop during the month of therapy in question. Already three months earlier, a group of 30-300 smaller follicles (a so-called cohort) starts to develop.

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The number of oocytes in an IVF treatment