Infertility Treatments

Our goal is to identify and treat the cause of your infertility and help you achieve your dream of becoming a parent.

For Infertility Treatment related requests call: 1-319-356-1767

If you or your partner are having trouble getting pregnant, you’re not alone. Infertility is common among individuals and couples throughout the U.S. and around the world.

Fortunately, medical advances have made it much easier to figure out what’s causing your infertility—and then treat it. And you can get any fertility test or treatment you need from University of Iowa Health Care.

Our reproductive endocrinologists specialize in female and male infertility. We can diagnose and manage any factors that have made it hard for you to conceive, including:

Problems with one of your reproductive organs, such as a blocked fallopian tube or varicocele (swollen testicular veins)
Hormone problems that affect your ability to ovulate or produce sperm, including polycystic ovary syndrome and hyperprolactinemia
Medical conditions such as endometriosis, which can damage the uterus, fallopian tubes, or other female reproductive organs
Semen abnormalities such as oligospermia (low sperm count) and low sperm motility
Risk factors such as age, weight, smoking, and alcohol or drug use
Unexplained infertility
A history of sterilizing surgery such as tubal ligation

How we approach infertility care

Whether you’re trying to start a family or want a second opinion about your reproductive options, turn to UI Health Care. We’re here to help pinpoint (and remove) any barriers preventing you from getting pregnant.

A comprehensive consultation

When you meet with one of our reproductive endocrinologists, you’ll have a thorough discussion about your medical and sexual history. This gives us clues about the cause of your infertility—and helps us choose the right tests.

Some of the items we’ll review include:

How long (and how frequently) you’ve been trying to get pregnant
Whether you have (or had) any medical conditions that can impact fertility
Whether you’ve had any medical treatments that can affect fertility, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy
If you’ve had problems with menstruation, such as irregular or absent periods

Fertility testing

For most patients, the key to getting pregnant is identifying the cause of your fertility challenges. Depending on your medical history, your provider may ask you to have one or more of the following tests:

Blood tests to check your hormone levels
A hysteroscopy to examine the uterus
A hysterosalpingogram (HSG) to look for blockages in the fallopian tubes
Male fertility tests, including semen analysis
Minimally invasive surgery (laparoscopy) to check for signs of medical conditions like endometriosis
Ovarian reserve testing to estimate your egg reserves
Ultrasound imaging to look for problems with the uterus, ovaries, and more

Infertility treatment recommendations

Once we understand why you’re having difficulty getting pregnant, we can recommend treatments that are most likely to help.

Depending on your needs, you may get all the care you need from our reproductive endocrinology team.

If you need advanced treatments that will improve your chances of conceiving, we may also refer you to another specialist. For example, our reproductive endocrinologists work closely with urologists to address male infertility. As a team, we’ll manage any underlying conditions or issues that are impacting your fertility.

Types of infertility treatments we offer

When we founded the UI Center for Advanced Reproductive Care in 1987, it was the first program of its kind in Iowa. Since then, we’ve become a trusted leader in infertility care.

We offer the full range of infertility treatments, with success rates above the national average. These treatments include:

Medicine

We offer oral and injectable medications that can regulate hormone levels, induce ovulation, address erectile dysfunction, and more.

Intrauterine insemination (IUI)

We use a thin tube (catheter) to place sperm directly into your uterus around the time your ovary releases an egg. We offer IUI with or without fertility drugs that induce ovulation.

In vitro fertilization (IVF)

We combine eggs and sperm outside of your body, in a laboratory. The sperm fertilizes the eggs to create embryos. Then we place an embryo directly into your uterus.

Surgery

We offer different types of surgery to treat problems associated with infertility. For example, we can remove scar tissue caused by endometriosis or unblock the tube that carries sperm to the egg.

Our clinical outcomes, including success rates by age and treatment type, are available through the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.

What to expect

Trying to get pregnant while undergoing medical tests and treatments can feel overwhelming. But with UI Health Care, you’ll have a partner to guide you through each step of the process. Plus, counseling is readily available and offered throughout your infertility treatment.

Your treatment plan will be based on several factors. These include your age, medical needs, and whether you’ve tried infertility treatments in the past.

If you have several options to choose from, we’ll help you decide where to start. Before moving forward, we’ll make sure you understand:

How each treatment works
The risks and benefits of each option
Possible complications or undesired outcomes
The average success rates
Which treatments your health insurance provider is likely to cover, and which ones you may need to pay for yourself

Whenever possible, we use a stepwise approach to treatment. In other words, we start with the simplest and least expensive option.

If you don’t get pregnant after a reasonable number of attempts, we try a different option. And we save the most complex (and often the costliest) treatments for last.

Who should see a reproductive endocrinologist?

If you haven’t gotten pregnant within a couple months of trying, don’t lose hope. For some people, it just takes a little longer to conceive.

However, you should consider scheduling a consultation with an infertility specialist if:

You’re under age 35, and haven’t gotten pregnant after trying regularly for a year
You or your partner are 35 or older, and haven’t gotten pregnant after six months of trying
You have irregular menstrual cycles
You or your partner are over 40

Additional options for building your family

We also offer services for people who are unable to carry a pregnancy or have concerns about their future fertility.

These include:

Using a donor: We offer access to donor eggs, embryos, and sperm.
Surrogacy (gestational carrier services): Another woman carries and gives birth to your child that was made using your egg. This is an option for people who can’t get pregnant because they have certain medical conditions (or don’t have a uterus).
Fertility preservation: We offer egg freezing, embryo freezing, sperm freezing, and other services to people who want to someday have children. This is an ideal option for people who need medical treatments that could cause infertility. It’s also an alternative for people who aren’t ready to start a family now, but plan to when they’re older.

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Looking for an infertility specialist?

If you’ve had trouble getting pregnant on your own or want to try a new infertility treatment, call us. We’ll match you with a specialist who can perform fertility tests and recommend the best treatments.

Call 1-319-356-1767 Refer a patient

Infertility Treatments