Fertility Treatments

The LWC provides IVF treatment for women and couples struggling to conceive and for same-sex couples and single women using donor sperm. IVF is a procedure in which eggs are fertilised with sperm in a laboratory. Embryos that are created following IVF are then transferred, normally one at a time, into the female partner’s womb to implant and develop.

ICSI is an IVF technique in which a single sperm is injected into the centre of an egg. Today, it’s the world's favoured fertilisation method for all types of IVF. ICSI can help men with low quality or quantity sperm by extracting just a few sperm cells from the testis for injection into the egg.

Intrauterine insemination (IUI) involves placing sperm – either from a male partner or with donor sperm - inside a woman’s uterus to facilitate fertilisation. IUI is a less invasive and less expensive option compared to IVF and is the most commonly applied technique for donor insemination.

Egg donation is most commonly used when the patient is unable to produce her own eggs. This type of infertility is often associated with older maternal age, when the ovaries store of follicles is beginning to run out. The LWC has partnered with the London Egg Bank to provide access to a very large database of UK-recruited HFEA-compliant egg donors via their online catalogue.

Egg-sharing is an IVF treatment which brings together women having conventional IVF (the sharer) with those unable to produce their own eggs (the recipient). The treatment enables these two groups of women to help one another - egg-sharers receive free IVF treatment, whilst recipients receive the eggs they need for IVF.

Embryo testing ensures only healthy embryos are used, giving fertility treatment the best chance of success.

Freezing is now an essential part of every clinic's IVF programme. Thanks to improved freezing techniques, clinics across the UK – and across the world - are moving towards freezing all embryos and transferring them at a later date once the female partner’s body has returned to normal following stimulation.

Surrogacy treatment is mainly sought by couples in whom the female partner is unable or unwilling to deliver a baby safely. This may be because of illness or a problem with the uterus. In recent years, surrogacy has become increasingly popular with gay men wishing to start a family with the help of a surrogate and sometimes an additional egg donor too.

A blastocyst is a fertilised embryo that is five or six days old. Historically embryo transfer following IVF or ICSI takes place two or three days after egg collection when the embryo contains around six to eight cells.  However, with improvements in culture media we can now culture embryos for five or six days more successfully than in the past. 

PESA and TESE are surgical procedures which are used to extract sperm when the male partner has no sperm present in the ejaculate.