Embryology Courses in Bangalore - What you need to know?

There's a couple different protocols to get the lining to thicken so that the embryo can really implant and have the best opportunity. You can either naturally ovulate or super ovulate with ovulation induction medications and then plan the transfer depending on whether the embryo is a day three or day five embryo. You also, the day of the transfer, we give a lot of tips on nutrition, think about acupuncture that day.

Before entering a specialized course, it is vital that the student has a clear understanding of the embryology course eligibility. In most courses, students with a background in life sciences, like MBBS, BDS, BVSc, BSc, MSc, and other related biomedical sciences, are eligible to pursue the course. In some institutions, it is also a prerequisite that the student has some knowledge of reproductive medicine or lab sciences. A student's understanding of the eligibility criteria for the course in embryology will help them become a qualified embryologist by choosing the right course in embryology in India.

We talk about whether we want you to rest for a couple of days after the embryo goes inside and we check a pregnancy test 10 to 14 days after the embryo is placed inside. And depending on the quality of the embryo, your age and certain qualifiers, we can talk about statistics as well. It's important not to overdo it.

Sometimes people are used to having a high stress job and really a lot of activities. And so, in general, there's no perfect answer. Some doctors really believe just go back to normal even that day and stuff like that.

We tend to say, try to take it easy, just not overdoing it. If your heart rate goes past 135, you're deviating the blood from the uterus. So it's good to not overexert yourself. And the uterine contractility is a little higher if the system thinks it's in fight or flight. So if you're really amping up and running and doing vigorous exercise, sometimes the system wants to have some contractility in the myometrium or muscle of the uterus. And so it's good to think about it.

Also, if you've had a retrieval, an egg retrieval, we want the ovaries to kind of go back to normal size and that can take about 10 days. So no intercourse or vigorous exercise after the egg retrieval. So your body can heal up properly and well too. All of us here at SCRC put a lot of dedication and compassion into every single patient.

I can go over some of those questions here. I saw the first one was I'm planning IVF in six months. When do I start prenatal and acupuncture and lifestyle modifications? Generally speaking, sooner is better because it's good for your health. But at least three months ahead would be ideal if you're planning six months ahead. Sometimes if a patient's older and their egg supply level is a little lower, we may only have the blessing of a month prep for them. And that's okay. We have to work in those circumstances or in cases of cancer or medical conditions. Sometimes we don't have the luxury of time. So we're kind of prompt to jump in and help.

The next question is how early to change alcohol, CBD or weed. Also, for men that does take 72 days to kind of revamp sperm quality.

So, a few months would be important. In women, there's a 90 day kind of concept for ovarian wave or follicular development. And so generally speaking, we say about a few months for those types of things. The next question was about insurance and costs.

It's good to talk to our financial counsellor. Once you've had a visit, we can discuss it. Plus they have an insurance verification team here. So, you could ask our team as well about that. The next question is if my partner had a vasectomy and cannot get it reversed, how do you know the sperm quality? That's a really good question. Generally speaking, we think of the man's body weight, medications, exposure to toxins.

We talk about also taking the vitamins as a precaution and then testicular sperm can get obtained with a urologist who's an expert in fertility. And so we work closely with them. We can still check blood tests on men such as morning total and free testosterone, thyroid, prolactin, estradiol, FSH. So sometimes we may not get to see a semen analysis but we can use certain targets for those levels to see what we can do to adjust or tweak them.

Next question is I have 47 XXX. How would this affect getting normal embryos? So in that, we see that occasionally. And so, we would talk closely with a genetic counsellor. In our facility, we have Caroline and Pam through tandem genetics. And we would communicate closely so you can really understand the odds of success and the genetics aspect of it with a genetic counsellor.

And we would see what we can do to help in that circumstance. Another question is I've been exposed to aspergillosis. How concerned should I be? So in those cases, we get asked this a lot in LA in terms of exposure to mould and toxins and things like that. So there are interesting ways to improve your overall health. So I always say we wanna feel as healthy as we can possibly be, especially before the embryo transfer because it's already in the lab frozen usually. And so, we have the window of time to get you as healthy and detoxed and everything like that. But we would talk to your doctor about a mechanism for that and see your inflammatory markers like CRP, ESR, and think about things like that.

Stressful, all like working and stress and the responsibility to have good nutrition, exercise, everything in moderation. And so the person was asking about stress and nutrition and exercise. Just everything in moderation, try to at least exercise three days a week for 30 minutes. Nutrition is over seven days. One of the days you can have like a free day of whatever you like, but the other six days you might want to plan ahead and meal prep and things like that, if you can.

The next question is about a male who has a low grade varicocele. I think it's a really, really good question. Some of them can impact sperm DNA fragmentation. And so once again, we talk about antioxidants and lifestyle things, but we work closely with the urologists because occasionally they'll look at the FSH and LH levels and they'll talk about different options of medications and things that may improve the success for IVF if that's the plan. Because it is like preparing for the, I joke for the Olympics when the Olympics are Friday, which is exciting, but you really wanna plan ahead because we don't wanna get a set of eggs and get aneuploidy embryos or unhealthy embryos and wish we had worked better to improve the odds with sperm quality. So it is good to work closely with a fertility urologist.

The next question is ureaplasma. It's important with ureaplasma to treat both partners at the same time and no intercourse during those two weeks. Sometimes with ureaplasma it can be resistant or persistent. And so sometimes we have to treat it with a different antibiotic for three weeks. But I think in general, if we caught it, we are trying to get that to improve before an embryo transfer. For the egg retrieval, most of the time we're using prophylactic antibiotics as a precaution. And so, we may not have to be as alarmed about that, but we could talk about it and discuss the risks and benefits of things like that. And I think this is the last question is the mini IVF, which a lot of people ask us about in our facility because the egg retrieval and the ICSI and embryo development, it's all one experience for patients. So, we don't have like a set mini IVF here. What we do though is really tune in. So, if someone is older and their follicle counts not high and giving so much medication may or may not really change the blessing of the egg quantity.

Sometimes we do think about like a mini IVF, which is less medication to push the set of follicles to grow without a huge amount of gonadotropins or injections, but it's very individualised. And it really, we have to evaluate what you've done in the past and try to determine what's gonna get the best outcome. So there's not like a cookie cutter sort of protocol.

Well, a few more questions came through. Robin, did you have any? Yeah, there's a few. One of the first lab questions is, where was it? Why, rumour on the street is your lab is the best.

What makes your lab better than others? I think in IVF, a lot of laboratories get scared with change because with change, there's always an opportunity for something to go wrong. We're really lucky here at SCRC because of the high number of patients we have. We have a lot of patients that donate to research. And with that research, we take our current protocols and we tweak them and we see if this freeze technique produces better survival, what can we do? So, we really value those embryos that are donated to research. And that's what gives us the ability not to just stay comfortable, but to always strive to be better and to improve our protocols. So we never stop. There's always room for growth and development in the IVF lab. And we're really lucky to have a lot of experience in the IVF lab.

We have really great leadership. And so, every time, if we have any patients that come through a few times, we always talk with the physician and see if there's something, we can tweak this, we can do this better. We're never resting until we get better outcomes.

And I think that's what really makes us, that's the biggest thing that separates us from all the other IVF labs. There's another question about new freezing that came out in 2019. And if you froze your eggs before 2019, does this mean that you're gonna have lower success? And if it was froze, it's more, I mean, it varies from lab to lab as well.

hey do a deep dive into all the different parameters and then they'll work together with us to give us a strategy. I saw a question about MTHFR. We're asked that in all the podcasts we do. But at the same token, if you take folate, it should overcome the MTHFR dilemma, but a fasting homocysteine level shows us that if that's healthy at a healthy level, then the MTHFR is not really doing anything. So I wouldn't be too worried, but some philosophies are that it's a big thing and really make it big.

Someone had five IUIs. And then, would I complete new testing in a waiting period? That's a good question. Well, so for us, the AMH tends to ebb and flow over six months sometimes. So I like to see the trend if I'm going to plan IVF, because it's used to decide in part of the picture for the protocol. The new testing for IVF mostly is a checklist of important tests that we use to guide us to prepare you for IVF. So there might be more tests your doctor may need to do if you've had many IUIs in the past too.

Do you only offer ICSI or can we choose natural embryo creation of just sperm and an egg in a dish? Not sure what it might be called. So, your two options are ICSI or natural INSEM, and we do offer both.

We tend to do a lot more ICSI because with natural INSEM, there are hundreds, if not thousands of things that could go wrong between the communication of the egg and the sperm. So, there is a higher chance of a no-fertility case, but usually what you do is you talk that over with your physician. You have to have, we have a threshold for sperm parameters, so you have to have good sperm.

Age can play a factor as well, but usually that's a question that you would ask Dr. A and she'll let you know if she thinks you're a good candidate for the INSEM or if she suggests to ICSI all. Yeah, I like lose sleep over that decision because part of me wants to try to do things natural because that's like your instinct. But at the same time, if someone has been trying for a while and hasn't had a pregnancy, nature with the egg and sperm near each other isn't making a fertilisation or a pregnancy.

It's hard to think that in the dish, why would we think we're automatically going to get a different outcome? So it's kind of a typical thing to think about pushing the sperm into the egg, which is called ICSI. But I think in general, if someone had a family history of any epigenetic things or different things, we would go into detail for each specific scenario again. So, but we're happy to think of other questions in the consults too.

There's one more question that says, can you talk a bit about more genetic testing of embryos, i.e. what you're able to test for? So we, in general, we do PGTA, which what that does is it looks at, every embryo should have two copies of its chromosomes. And what it does is it makes sure that there are two copies. Sometimes there will only be one copy. Sometimes there will be three copies. The most well-known example of three copies is Down syndrome, which is three copies of chromosome 21. We also do PGTM, which looks at specific genes on a chromosome.

And we don't typically do that unless there's an indication for it. If one of the parents has a genetic abnormality, then we would look at that. And then the result that we're looking for is euploid, which means that from what the testing found, everything was proper number of chromosomes and single genes were correct as well.

But you can have an aneuploid result, which means there's an abnormal amount of chromosomes. And then you can have a mosaic result, which is a hot topic in the IVF world these days, which means that some of the cells we sent for testing came back euploid, and some of the cells we sent for testing came back aneuploid. So the famous example we use is a soccer ball, how usually it has black entities and white entities.

That's kind of the example of what the embryo has. And there's a million different possibilities with those, which is why we have a full-time genetics team with us. And if we ever have any mosaic results that come back, you speak with Pam or Caroline, and they walk you through every step of what they recommend, what they don't, and we walk you through whether or not we're able to transfer it.

There are a few IVF labs in Los Angeles that transfer mosaics as well, but it's a case by case. We go over every detail once those results do come in. And like I said, Dr. A, she gives you a call once your results come in, and that's your opportunity to ask questions and then speak with our genetics team as well.

And on that same line of question, which was, what is the genetics on the embryo? What are we testing for? If you have a strong family history of early Alzheimer's or breast cancer or Lynch syndrome for colon cancer and things like that, sometimes we have to work with medical genetics to see if either you or your partner carries a specific gene. And that does take a little time, but that's called PGTM. So that's a specific gene.

Because some of our patients, they test everything possible that you possibly can. You can only test for those specific targets if you actually carry those genes. If we're looking at like a catchment of a wide variety of things, that's not very specific for an embryo. Because all of us have different genes that may or may not impact our lives. And so when patients say, test everything you can possibly do, we're mostly looking at aneuploidy screening for specific chromosomes or a specific single gene that you carry or your partner carries too.

Do you have an age limit that you will do IVF with? Oh, yeah. Well, so our ethics committee agreed that for plain eggs to freeze, we'll go to age 44. But in some states where they mandate fertility coverage, I talked to all my friends on the East Coast a lot, and they are very strict about 40 usually for egg freezing. But here we've had pregnancies with eggs from women into their 40s. We've had healthy embryos into our mid later 40s, but those patients were making embryos.

And an embryo, it tends to be more robust and stronger than plain eggs. And their AMH and FSH and ovarian reserve were a little bit of outliers where their system had a higher ovarian reserve than you would have predicted at age 45 or 46. I think it's hard because we're trying to balance the odds of getting a genetically healthy embryo.

And we want to help every couple, no matter what age they are. But at the same time, we know that no matter what we do, as women, when our ovaries start to age, we don't have a way to sort of reverse that. And so I think it's, as an older parent myself, I think it's really hard because everybody wants an opportunity for their own eggs and sperm.

But at the same time, sometimes we have to write out our pros and cons and the risks of the procedure and things like that. So, there's no hard and fast rule in our facility. We take it case by case. Somebody asked a gender selection in IVF and IUI. We do offer a sperm processing technique that separates male and female, but we do know that it's not very, the most effective way is to do PGT testing. And that'll tell you what sex the embryo is.

Sperm processing only increases your chances by about 5%. So we typically don't offer that off the bat, but we do have some patients that, it's kind of their last hope and they wanna do everything we can. And then that is an option. As long as the human analysis looks good. Yes, exactly. So that's good.

Somebody asked, how much does an initial consultation cost? I stay a little bit out of cost, because again, as the medical doctor, I worry more about the mechanics of things, but we have a insurance verification team and a financial counsellor that you could work closely with.

To put it briefly, the rapidly evolving field of assisted reproductive technology underlines the significance of the role of skilled embryologists in the successful completion of in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures. From embryo culture and genetic tests to quality assurance and improvement, the science of embryology is the essential basis of all modern fertility treatments. For those who wish to make a valuable contribution to this rapidly evolving field, training is indispensable, and as such, embryology courses in bangalore are becoming increasingly vital, as they equip students, medical professionals, and life science graduates with the necessary expertise and skills to practice with confidence in IVF clinics and meet the increasing need for assisted reproductive technology services.