Doctors usually give women fertility medications during IVF to mature multiple eggs. Are IVF Success rates better if you have more eggs? Tune in to this episode of InfertilityTV to find out.
The eggs sitting in your ovaries right now are immature eggs. Normally, only 1 egg matures each month. This means that you have 1 chance that this is a healthy, good quality egg. One chance that it will be fertilized. 1 chance that it will grow and develop into a healthy embryo and one chance that it will implant into the uterus to produce a pregnancy. Chances are pretty good that with only 1 egg, it will not get past all of those hurdles necessary to produce a pregnancy.
Ultimately, you only have to have one healthy embryo to produce that pregnancy. Now, lets say you have 10 eggs and 8 of them are mature eggs, 5 of them fertilize and two of them grow and develop into healthy good quality embryos. With 10 eggs, we have a much better chance of finding the good healthy embryo that we want.
So, yes! If you are doing IVF, getting more eggs is better than having fewer eggs. This is the reasons that women who tend to produce fewer eggs, such as older women or women with poor ovarian reserve, get pregnant less often. Its a numbers game.
If getting 10 eggs is better than 1, wouldn’t 100 eggs be better than 10? In theory, yes, it would be better but we run into some problems. Women who mature a large number of eggs in response to fertility medications are at greater risk for a problem called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome or OHSS.
Women who develop OHSS can develop some serious medical complications. While these complications can usually be treated, it is better if we could avoid OHSS in the first place. So, the best IVF doctors, will try to come up with some middle ground. Get enough eggs to increase the chances of finding some healthy embryos but not so many that a woman develops OHSS. This can be a tricky balance.
The InfertilityTV bottom line? Its possible that 1 egg can get you pregnant and its possible that 100 eggs wont. But it general, the more you get, the higher the probability of success. You just have to find a way to do it safely to keep your risk for OHSS low.
Infertility TV is your weekly source for the best medical information if you have infertility, recurrent miscarriage or are just trying to conceive. (TTC). InfertilityTV covers infertility testing, fertility treatments such as Clomid, Follistim and Crinone and fertility treatments like IUI and IVF (in vitro fertilization)
One of the most popular playlists on InfertilityTV are the TTC tips which are great even you are not struggling with infertility
Dr Morris is a practicing IVF and infertility expert who sees patients at IVF! located in the Naperville Fertility Center.
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