At North Cyprus IVF Center, we offer comprehensive fertility care for both married and single prospective parents. This includes single mothers and fathers to be. In this blog post, we discuss fertility treatment options for prospective single mothers. Regardless of your marital status, the most important part of any fertility treatment is testing and assessment. We will first want to assess your ovarian function, review your previous reproductive/gynecological history and formulate a treatment plan accordingly. After a thorough assessment, the most suitable treatment option can be chosen and we can then move forward with treatment planning. The following important steps outline how your fertility treatment planning is approached at North Cyprus IVF Center. 

Fertility Assessment
Before any fertility treatment, a thorough assessment is key to formulating the most optimal course of treatment. For women in their 20s and 30s, using own eggs is usually a viable option. However, for women over 40 years of age, a thorough ovarian assessment is made before a conclusion can be made whether own eggs can be used. Every woman is born with a finite set of ovarian reserves and these reserves decline with each menstrual cycle over time. By the time a woman reaches 40 years of age, a great majority of her egg reserves will have been depleted. While pregnancy over 40 can be achieved, success depends on whether viable eggs can be obtained or not. If a woman's ovarian function is still within acceptable levels and viable eggs can be obtained, then IVF treatment with own eggs can yield a desired outcome. The first step, therefore, is Fertility Testing.

Deciding on a Suitable Treatment Option
If your ovarian reserves are found within acceptable levels, then IUI or IVF treatment can be planned using donor sperm. If you are in your 20s or early 30s, and would like to opt for a non-invasive method of fertility treatment, then IUI treatment can be right for you. As mentioned above, your ovarian function will be an important determinant prior to deciding on a suitable treatment option. However, if you are found to be in the "optimal level of fertility", then IUI treatment can be one of your options.

If you are in slightly older age brackets (30 and above), and/or your ovarian function is also slightly reduced, then chances of success with the non-invasive IUI treatment will be very low. In these cases, we recommend considering IVF Treatment using donor sperm.

If your ovarian reserves have been depleted and test results indicate no ovarian function, then achieving pregnancy with your own eggs will be very unlikely. In such cases, you may need to consider using donor eggs for a successful pregnancy. You will find more information here on IVF Treatment with Egg and Sperm Donation. 

Now, with improved IVF techniques and technologies, certain applications such as "Ovarian rejuvenation via PRP injection" can possibly help women in older age brackets to initiate egg development in their ovaries. While this is still in early clinical trial stage, the preliminary results look very promising. 

Treatment Planning and Preparation
Once the optimal treatment method is chosen, the next step is to prepare for treatment. Once we have effectively reviewed your test results, we will be able to draft a treatment program that is customized for you specifically. Your treatment program will include a very detailed account of what needs to be done on a daily basis prior to your arrival in Cyprus. Please see the following pages for more information on "How to Obtain and use IVF Medication" and "Traveling to Cyprus". 

Arrival in Cyprus and Finalization of Your Treatment
Once you arrive in Cyprus, you will have a scheduled appointment before finalizing the IVF procedure. Your final scans and mock transfer will take place on your "First Appointment in Cyprus". Prior to your arrival, you will be able to choose your accommodation from a variety of "Accommodation Options" offered by North Cyprus IVF Center.

Your patient coordinators will be guiding you throughout your treatment program from start to finish, ensuring a comfortable and stress-free treatment. Please contact us for more information. 

Associate Professor Dr. Savas Ozyigit, a pioneer in the field of assisted reproductive treatments in Cyprus, and the director of North Cyprus IVF Center receives a "Lifetime Achievement Award" for his contributions to the field of medicine over the course of his career. Adding one more trophy to his collection of many, Dr. Savas Ozyigit gave a short speech at his award acception ceremony.

During his speech, Prof. Ozyigit said "It was twenty years ago when I first mentioned it to colleagues that it was a shame couples with infertility problems could not be helped in North Cyprus and had to travel to other countries to seek help. People said it was not a good idea to invest in such a big project for such a small population. They said it would not be profitable and they said I might as well throw my money into a trash can. It wasn't the smallness of population that was the problem. It was the small faith they had in medicine. Today, I stand here holding an award for my work and accomplishment. This is the field of medicine thanking me for believing and taking that first step that no other person was willing to take just because they did not think it was financially viable. Not only it has been financially viable, it has allowed me to train many others to go into this field and become my competitors! There are now ten IVF clinics in North Cyprus! Thank you medicine, for being such a rewarding field. I would have chosen you all over if I were to come to this world again..."

Dr. Savas Ozyigit is the founder of North Cyprus IVF Center, the very first IVF clinic in Northern Cyprus, which was established in 1998. Almost all of the current IVF specialists in Northern Cyprus have been his students at one point during their medical training. As a medical innovator, he has always introduced many firsts in the field of medicine on the island. The first bone densitometry, the first mammogram, the first radical hysterectomy operation, the first IVF clinic and the first genetics laboratory are just a few examples.

We are sure that Dr. Savas Ozyigit still has many awards ahead of him. To contact North Cyprus IVF Center and schedule an appointment with Dr. Savas Ozyigit for your consult/fertility treatment, please use http://www.lowcostivf.net/contact.html or call/text/whatsapp +90 548 882 8000 / +90548 828 9955.

We frequently receive requests from women who would like to plan a pregnancy because their ovarian reserves have declined and they are afraid waiting will further impair their chances of parenting their own biological children if pregnancy is further delayed. As North Cyprus IVF Clinic, we wanted to write this blog post and let you know that if you are a single woman who is not ready to have a child just yet, you do have a number of options and we are ready to assist you with these options.

1- Getting pregnant using donor sperm- You could undergo an IVF treatment using donor sperm and plan a pregnancy accordingly. However, this would be a rushed decision. With today's technological advancements in assisted reproduction, we are able to preserve your fertility for a future date in a number of ways. Therefore, we would not recommend rushing to get pregnant only because your biological clock is ticking. You should be a mother when you are ready.

2- Freezing embryos using donor sperm- In this option, you would prepare very much like in an IVF cycle, we would collect the eggs, use donor sperm to fertilize your eggs and create embryos. Instead of transferring these embryos into the uterus for an immediate pregnancy, we would freeze them so that your embryos would be ready for transfer at a future date. This is a good option considering that freezing embryos gives you a higher chance of success compared to freezing eggs when the egg quality is not optimal. An egg is just a single cell, so it is more likely to be affected by the freeze/thaw procedures. However, an embryo is incubated into a certain stage of development before it is frozen so that it has a higher number of cells and a higher success with the freeze/thaw process.

3- Freezing eggs as eggs without using any sperm- This is the best method for a young woman who is not yet ready to start a family. It helps preserve your fertility, allowing you to have your own biological children in the future. This option is also good in the sense that there is no sperm donor involvement, therefore, if you do meet someone in the future who would be a good candidate to co-parent, then you can use his sperm instead of a donor, or you can still use a donor but it would give you more options when the time comes. However, if your ovarian reserves have declined, then it is likely that egg quality has also started going down. When the egg quality is poor, eggs are less likely to survive the freeze/thaw procedures. Therefore, if you are freezing eggs, it will make sense to freeze a certain number of eggs so that you can have multiple attempts at IVF treatment with them in the future. Our recommendation would be undergoing a couple of cycles of ovarian stimulation so that we can get a certain number of eggs on each attempt and freeze as many eggs as we can so that we can offer you a good chance of success in the future considering that some of the eggs will not survive the freeze/thaw process when their quality is not optimal.

​We just wanted you to know that you have options and we are here to assist with these options...

We all know that ovarian function and the level of fertility decline with age and we might just need that extra help to conceive as we age. While standard IVF/ICSI treatments can be a solution for some, some other patients may need to explore added benefits of technology and innovation as well as "outside the box" treatments to achieve pregnancy.

At North Cyprus IVF Clinic, we have been offering "outside the box" treatment options for our patients when offering assisted reproductive treatments. Our new treatment option "Cytoplasmic Tandem IVF" is one such treatment option for patients with lowered ovarian reserves and poor egg quality. Cytoplasmic Tandem IVF combines the benefits of a "Tandem IVF Cycle" with "Cytoplasmic IVF Transfer" to give you the best of two worlds! 

A Tandem IVF cycle means using your own eggs as well as donor eggs in a single IVF treatment cycle. This allows women to have a chance of pregnancy using their own eggs by also having donor eggs as their back-up plan should their own eggs do not provide good quality embryos, sufficient for an embryo transfer.

A Cytoplasmic IVF transfer also uses an egg donor and own eggs in a single cycle. But with cytoplasmic IVF, it is not the eggs of the egg donor that we are interested in but rather the cytoplasmic content of the eggs. We retrieve the cytoplasmic content of the egg donor's eggs and inject it into the eggs of the patient, thus, providing our patient's eggs with a better host environment for cellular growth and development and giving them a higher chance of success with their own eggs.

By combining the two treatments, we not only improve your chances of IVF success using your own eggs, but we also allow you to fertilize the rest of the donor eggs (the ones that are not used for their cytoplasm) with your partner's sperm sample. The embryos created by donor eggs can be frozen and preserved for a future date in case your treatment cycle fails and you decide to use donor eggs in the future. This way, you can have an IVF treatment where your personal success likelihood is maximized using your own eggs and where you are also given a back-up plan with donor eggs in a future IVF cycle should things don't work out as planned - All for a single cost of treatment!

Please contact us for more information! 

Challenges faced by 40+ women when trying to get pregnant are twofold:

1- Every woman is born with a finite set of ovarian reserves. Starting with puberty, these reserves start to decline every month with the menstrual cycle. Around the age of 37, the number of follicles (cysts which contain the eggs) drop down to less than one percent of what it was at birth. Therefore, the ovarian reserves will have declined to very low levels by the time a woman turns 40 years of age.

2- Just like any other cell in our bodies, egg cells also age. The aging oocyte (egg) is associated with several problems including mitochondrial dysfunctions, aneuploidy and epigenetic changes. Mitochondria is the power source of any cell. Any dysfunction in mitochondria is going to affect cellular energy and development. Aneuploidy refers to chromosomal problems, which is the main factor explainign why women in older age brackets are more likely to have miscarriages or deliver babies with chromosomal abnormalities such as down's syndrome (Also see our Cytoplasmic Transfer page for more information on how we can use donor cytoplasm in order to improve IVF success in older age brackets). 

In summary, both the quality and the quantity of eggs decline to very low levels by the time a woman reaches 40 years of age and this affects both her ability to become pregnant and to become pregnant with a healthy baby.

One of our recommendations for patients in 40+ age bracket is embryo banking. Embryo banking refers to undergoing a number of IVF cycles with one embryo transfer scheduled at the end of the last cycle. For instance, a patient can have one IVF cycle where we collect her eggs, fertilize with the partner's sperm sample and freeze the resulting embryos. Once ther patient undergoes a second cycle, we repeat the same process and obtain more embryos. This can be repeated 2 or 3 times until a desired number of embryos have been reached.

Once the ideal number of embryos has been reached, the embryos can be incubated to the blastocyst stage and the ones that reach this stage can either be transferred into the uterus for pregnancy, or, they can be screened via pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS) method in order to check the chromosomal integrity of the embryos. Once PGS has been performed, the healthy and chromosomally euploid embryos can be selected for embryo transfer.

Embryo banking allows us to increase the number of embryos available for embryo transfer. This coupled with PGS will also allow us to make sure the embryos being transferred do not have chromosomal problems. 

For more information, please contact us. 

One of the main problems facing IVF patients over 40 years of age is the decline in ovarian reserves. Every woman is born with a finite number of ovarian follicles and while a very small number of these follicles succeed in becoming a mature egg, majority of the rest of the follicles never reach ovulation and are disposed with every menstrual cycle. Around the age of 37, the decline in ovarian reserves becomes very sharp.

As a woman gets older, declining ovarian reserves is not the only problem faced in fertility. As age gets older, so do the follicles in the ovaries. Therefore, another problem called "oocyte aging" becomes more pronounced. This is in fact one of the main reasons why women above the age of 40 are more likely to experience a miscarriage- An aging oocyte will be associated with a number of genetic problems, causing the baby to have genetic mutations, thus leading to a miscarriage. 

At North Cyprus IVF Center, we offer a comprehensive treatment approach for 40+ patients, which combines a number of important considerations in terms of ovarian reserves and oocyte aging. Patients who still ovulate, and who still have a minimal level of ovarian activity are ideal candidates for our 40+ treatment program. It is important that the female patient still has at least 1/2 pre-antral follicles to be recruited via controlled ovarian hyperstimulation so that we can offer a chance of success with own eggs. For patients with no ovarian function, then using an Egg Donor becomes the only option.

#1- Cytoplasmic IVF Treatment: Patients who still have a few oocytes, but cannot get pregnancy with those oocytes due to oocyte aging can possibly benefit from our cytoplasmic IVF treatment. The principle here is, we use the genetic material from the patient, but we provide the non-genetic parts of the egg from an egg donor so that the patient's own eggs have a friendlier host for optimal growth. It is a known fact that the mitochondria found in the cell's cytoplasm is responsible for cellular energy production and cell growth. By providing the patient's eggs with donor mitochondria, we allow the eggs to grow more optimally and become more viable.

#2- PGS for Genetic Screening: While Cytoplasmic IVF Treatment will allow your eggs to be more viable with higher fertilization potential, it will not be able to eliminate potential genetic risks associated with the age of the patient. Therefore, pre-implantation genetic screening is a good idea to make sure only the genetically correct embryos are transferred into the uterus. Keep in mind that we are not aiming for just any pregnancy. We are aiming for a healthy and viable pregnancy.

#3- Embryo Batching: Given that IVF treatment after a certain age will only allow us to have just a few eggs, any method that will allow us to get more eggs will increase our chances of success. Therefore, while we will be providing your eggs with a better host for optimal growth via cytoplasmic transfer, we still need a certain number of eggs so that we can make sure in the end we have at least one well-grown, genetically correct embryo to transfer. Embryo batching is the key component of success in this age bracket. Combining two rounds of IVF cycles into one allows us to get double the number of eggs- Essentially, what we do is, we prepare you for one round of IVF cycle where we collect the eggs, infuse them with donor cytoplasm, fertilize into embryos and freeze. Once you are ready for the second round, we collect another set of eggs, repeat the same procedures and make a new batch of embryos. With the two sets of embryos at hand, we proceed with pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS) and select a chromosomally normal embryo for transfer, thus giving you the maximum chance of success possible using your own eggs.

In summary: 
We give your eggs the maximum chance of survival through cytoplasmic transfer - we collect two rounds of eggs to increase your likelihood of success by creating multiple embryos - We make sure the embryos to be transferred are chromosomally euploid through PGS testing. This is how we are able to offer you the maximum chance of success possible with your own eggs. 

Contact us for more information.

IVF with egg donation is the type of IVF treatment where patient undegoes IVF treatment using donor eggs. When using donor eggs in an IVF treatment, one of the decisions patients make is whether to use a known or an anonymous egg donor. While there are pros and cons of each option and the decision to use a known or an anonymous egg donor depends mainly on the recipients' own perspective, we wanted to discuss both options here in this article so that our patients who would like to consider the option of using an egg donor can make an informed decision.

Our laws in North Cyprus only allow egg donor matching in an anonymous fashion. This does not mean that you can only use anonymous egg donors. It means, we, as the clinic, can only match you with an egg donor anonymously. However, if you would like to use a known donor, then we would need to involve an external egg donor agency for the matching process so that you can be matched via the agency, and not the clinic.

Using an Anonymous Egg Donor:
If you are to use one of North Cyprus IVF Clinic's egg donors, then donation needs to be done anonymously. For donor mathcing, we ask that you fill out a donor/recipient form and return it to us. Using your information and matching criteria, our donor coordinator will match you with suitable egg donors and we will be able to send you these matching profiles so that you can make your own choice. Since our donor coordinator will have your information as well as the donors' information, she will make sure that you are only matched with donors who are compatible with your criteria. 

However, we are able to provide you with a profile page for your egg donor with basic information such as age, height, weight, eye, skin and hair color, education, occupation, hobbies etc. What we cannot share is a picture of your egg donor. Anonymous egg donors remain anonymous at all times and so do you. Therefore, your egg donor will not receive your contact information and will never see your pictures. 

One of the main benefits of using a clinic egg donor is that we screen our egg donors very closely and we mainly recruit donors with proven pregnancies. Therefore, when you select an anonymous egg donor at our clinic, you will know that the donor has donated before and contributed to a positive pregnancy or has her own child, making her a fertility proven egg donor.

Using a Known Egg Donor:
Some patients prefer to see a picture of their egg donor or even meet them. This is made possible by our overseas egg donor agency. While we are not able to match you up with a "known" clinic donor, we can offer you the option of choosing an agency donor so that the agency can match you up with a known donor and your egg donor can fly out to Cyprus to donate for you. While this gives you the freedom of seeing your donor, meeting her in person and possibly contact via skype or the phone, considering the involvement of another agency and the travel aspects, using a known egg donor will be much more costly compared to using one of clinic's donors.

The additional cost of using a known egg donor from our overseas agency runs between 8,500 - 11,000 USD depending on the egg donor. 

Please visit the following link for more information on our "IVF Treatment using Donor Eggs". 

Gender selection is a treatment option offered by North Cyprus IVF Center, which makes it possible for patients to select the sex of their unborn baby before pregnancy. Some patients would like to select the sex of their next child purely for family balancing purposes while other patients opt for sex selection as  a way of reducing the likelihood of a sex-linked disease in their offspring. Regardless of your reason, gender selection is legally offered in Cyprus by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Savas Ozyigit and his experienced team. 

While there are a few alternative methods for gender selection at North Cyprus IVF Center, one of the methods has become very popular among younger couples due to its non-invasive nature. MicroSort IUI offers couples the ability to become pregnant with a baby of certain sex without any invasive methods used in IVF treatments.

MicroSort, which is a patented sperm selection technology, is only available at North Cyprus IVF Center in all of Europe and the Middle Eastern region. This technology allows us to separate X and Y bearing cells in a sperm sample. Once the desired sperm cells are separated, they are injected intra-uterine for pregnancy to occur. Below are some of the frequently asked questions about this method of gender selection:

- What is the percentage success rate of pregnancy following MicroSort and Artificial Insemination (AI) only? Success with IUI (same as AI) is lower than IVF protocols. In younger age brackets, success on the first attempt with IUI is around 30-32%. For some people, the low success rate is offset by the fact that IUI is a non-invasive procedure and the fact that it's cheaper. However, some patients care more about the likelihood of success on the first attempt, so they opt for IVF instead. This is something that you would need to decide for yourself, but we are here to equip you with the necessary information so that you can make that decision.

- What is the percentage chance of having a girl with Microsort? MicroSort has a 90% accuracy rate for selection of sperm cells bearing X cells (girls). Therefore, if you are pregnant after the IUI procedure, there will be a 90% chance that your child will be a girl. The accuracy of selection of a baby boy is around 75%. 

- What is the percentage chance of having twins? Not likely with IUI, but it has happened before. It would probably be less than 3% given that IUI cycles are well-monitored and the ovaries are only very mildly stimulated.

- What is the name of the medication I will need to take and what does it do? We usually prescribe a low dosage Gonal-F, which is an FSH supplementation. It contains the hormone FSH, which is normally released by the pituitary gland located in your brain- triggered by follicle development. So we would try and mimic the natural physiology of reproductive events and supplement you with the hormones externally in order to get your ovaries to recruit more follicles for growth. That way, we can increase the chances of sperm fertilizing an egg.
 
- What happens if I don't take it? If you don't take any medication, we can still work with your natural cycle and use the one egg that will be released by the ovaries. Since you will only have the one egg, we will only have that one egg to work with, so that will reduce the likelihood of success, but it is possible to get a pregnancy after a natural cycle as we have had many patients in such cases. But if you ask us, using a mild medication protocol will increase your chances.

- When do I need to take it? And for how long? We would give you a treatment protocol which will specify everything in detail.

- How much does it cost? The cost is 2,800 Euros for MicroSort IUI. 

For more information about our gender selection program and different treatment options suited for different patient groups, please visit our "Gender Selection at North Cyprus IVF Center" link.

So you are interested in gestational surrogacy and are looking for an affordable yet reliable program. Cyprus America Surrogacy Services (CASS) has been offering a low cost alternative to the US surrogacy program while offering you all the legal coverage of a US program. 

Our unique surrogacy program offers a state of the art treatment facilities at our clinic in the beautiful island of Cyprus while dealing with all the legal work, surrogate recruitment, child birth and registration in the US in accordance with the US legal system. Our program combines the low cost of IVF treatment with the solid legal framework of the United States surrogacy laws in order to offer you a perfect surrogacy program. 

While cost is a large concern when it comes to surrogacy programs, success rates and legal coverage are the most important factors to keep in mind when selecting your surrogacy program. North Cyprus IVF Center and International Surrogacy Partners, joined together offer you Cyprus America Surrogacy Services (CASS), a successful low cost program with the legal coverage that offers full protection for you as the legal parents of your child whether you are a heterosexual couple, a gay couple or a single parent to be. 

For more information on our surrogacy services, please view our Gestational Surrogacy Program page as well as our Same-Sex Gay Surrogacy Program page. 

Maximizing success rates in more biologically advanced age brackets has always been a challenge in IVF treatments. Patients above the age of 35 start facing a sharp decline in their ovarian function and this decline becomes much sharper after the age of 40. Over the past couple of decades, we have witnessed introduction of several new "methods" and "strategies" in an attempt to increase pregnancy rates in patients over 40. While some of these methods contribute to success, some others seem to have no significant effect.

One of the promising modifications of IVF treatments was to use the human growth hormone (HGH) as part of an IVF medication regimen. While the industry had high hopes for the impact of HGH on IVF outcomes, the initial results were rather disappointing. After a series of dose adjustments and many other attempts, the results were still not as well as what scientists had originally planned.

In theory, growth hormone should contribute positively to IVF outcomes in terms of oocyte count and quality. However, evidence from the preliminary work suggests that rather than increasing the dosage, administration of the human growth hormone should be done in consideration of folliculogenesis. Previous studies introudced HGH during or immediately before an IVF cycle. The hypothesis with this modified version rests on the fact that follicles are more sensitized at different phases of development and the precise length of folliculogenesis contains the necessary information on when follicles containing oocytes can be best manipulated through external means. 

At North Cyprus IVF, we have now started offering this modified and excelled version of human growth hormone administration for patients over the age of 40. Expected benefits of this protocol is as follows:

- Decreased aneuploidy rates in embryos created in vitro
- Increased implantation and pregnancy rates with oocytes subjected to HGH

While we do not expect much increase with the actual oocyte count, our expectation is that the oocytes obtained via our new modified therapy will generate chromosomally euploid embryos which will improve pregnancy outcomes significantly for the 40+ age group.

While this is being run as a clinical trial in the United States, which won't finalize until 2017, North Cyprus IVF Center is proud to offer this modified protocol starting in December 2015. For more information, please contact us.