Superovulation Information - Dr. Bruce Rose of Infertility Solutions, Pennsylvania IVF

Superovulation

A very important tool in infertility is the use of gonadotropins. These drugs include Pergonal, Metrodin, Fertinex, Follistim, Gonal F, Humagon, Braville, Menopur, and Repronex. This class of medications can be used in a number of ways with and without other medications. Our objective in using these drugs is either to improve egg quality and/or increase the availability of the number of eggs to be produced. Although we use these drugs in several ways, our therapies are always individualized to a patient's response.

One of our primary approaches is a low dose medication approach. We believe that this works primarily because it improves egg quality and corrects minor degrees of ovarian dysfunction. My initial experience utilizing this method was published several years ago.
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The other common method we utilize is a more aggressive ovulation where we generally try to maximize egg number and utilize a combination of gonadotropins and a medication like Lupron. The ovulation induction that we use in this sense is very similar to the one that we use prior to an in vitro fertilization cycle.

Based on the literature we usually combine superovulation with IUI because we feel that it makes the pregnancy rate about 25% higher than it would otherwise be. This is likely due to several factors. Since IUI delivers more sperm to the egg, it likely compensates for partially recognized or unrecognized sperm factors. It also partially compensates for endometriosis (treated and untreated).