Saturday, March 25, 2006

Pre-Day 14: Tonight's Movie Starring... Oocites!

Check it out. I found this completely amazing IVF video on OR Live. (I am a giant geek. This website ROCKS.)

The Center for Reproductive Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, was featured in this really cool webcast showing how they do IVF, including oocite retrieval...



... what the embryologist sees and does in the lab...





... how the eggs and sperm look when they're being cultured and/or manipulated...





... stuff like stages of meiosis, checking for pronuclei, morula stage, blastocyst stage...



... and how the geneticist does preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and everything...



I loved watching it, because I am quite interested in the medical and bio procedures and frankly, I sort of felt uneducated about a lot of this. This video is long overdue in answering a lot of questions for me. It's aimed at a lay audience (no pun intended for all you TTC'ers out there) but they explain assuming you have half a brain. Which is always good. Because most of us do.

It's over an hour, so pop some corn and make some time if you're interested.

(Be sure to disable your browser's pop-ups. Also, I think they might have had a few technical difficulties during their webcast because sometimes they don't cut away effectively to the slides/insert videos.)

4 comments:

charlie's mom said...

I loved our embryologist and have even found myself daydreaming that I would like to become one (forget that I couldn't get past algebra). What they do is really amazing and wonderful.

Family Ties said...

WOW! Technology is so cool!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting that link - it was so interesting to watch. The science of all this is so fascinating.

x said...

I love the picture of the ICSI process, it makes me all warm and fuzzy to see it. I love seeing the behind the scene's. It's so amazing what those doctors do to try and help us.