What Is Precycle Screening for IVF?

What is precycle screening for IVF?

—Ellen

Precycle screening or pre-testing for IVF refers to the testing that is done before you get started with your IVF cycle. This testing will give a sense of your overall health, how well you are expected to respond to IVF medications, and what could be contributing to any potential infertility you (and your partner, if applicable) may be experiencing.

First, your physician will do a review of your medical, surgical, gynecologic, and family history and your medication list to make sure there aren’t any red flags that need to be addressed before getting started with IVF. Then your physician will order the testing, which generally includes blood tests, ultrasounds, and a semen analysis. Depending on your specific situation, your doctor may also want you to consult with your primary care provider or other medical specialists to make sure you are up to date on all of your health screenings (such as Pap smears and mammograms), optimize any chronic medical conditions, and to develop a plan for management of any medications that may impact the minor surgery needed to retrieve the eggs as well as the future pregnancy. If you are using donor gametes (donor sperm or donor eggs), this may also include counseling on the implications of having a donor-conceived child.

The blood work will have some measurement of your “ovarian reserve” — a rough estimate of the number of eggs remaining in your ovary, which is helpful for picking IVF medication dosing and expectation setting. These tests will include genetic carrier screening to make sure that you and your partner or donor are not positive for the same conditions, because you could then potentially have a child with that condition. They will also incorporate infectious disease testing and other prenatal labs. A pelvic ultrasound is often done to similarly get a sense of ovarian reserve and can be done to evaluate the uterine cavity and fallopian tubes, which will need to be done before an embryo transfer. Finally, the semen analysis will look at how many sperm are in the sample, if they are moving in the right direction, and if they look normal.

Pretesting is also necessary to make your IVF protocol — the specific types and doses of medications that will be used throughout your IVF cycle. Having the pretesting and talking to your physician about the results will help make sure you have realistic expectations about what you can expect from your IVF cycle.