If you want to start a family but are not able to, you may have chosen the option of IVF treatment. But sometimes, IVF treatments can also fail.
In this article, Dr. Hrishikesh Pai from Bloom IVF Center in Mumbai, discusses repeated IVF failure and its causes and treatment.
What is Repeated IVF Failure?
IVF has become a very successful treatment for infertility over the past few years. In this process, your IVF specialist stimulates your ovaries to produce multiple eggs using medications, and they harvest these eggs using your partner’s or donor’s sperm.
The embryos will develop in the lab, and the doctor will transfer the most viable embryos to your uterus. Then these embryos will attach to the lining of your uterus and develop into a baby.
But if the embryo doesn’t attach to the uterus, the chances of miscarriage increase. Sometimes, after the IVF procedure, the process might fail to result in pregnancy.
If you have had three or more failed IVF cycles, it is called repeated or recurrent IVF failure (RIF). If this is the case, a proper diagnosis and finding out what is causing this repeated failure is essential.
Dr. Hrishikesh Pai is a renowned IVF specialist at one of the best IVF centers in India, Bloom IVF Center.
Causes
Dr. Pai says that there are multiple reasons why an IVF treatment can fail. Some of them are as follows:
Poor Embryo Quality
The embryos may stop developing, a common reason for IVF failure. This could happen because of some undiscovered defect in the genetic testing done before the implantation.
The embryo fails to implant because it might not be healthy enough to grow.
Poor Quality of Eggs
The quality of the embryo is affected by the age of the eggs. If you are a woman over 35, this can lead to repeated IVF failure.
Women are born with a set number of eggs. As you age, the quality of these eggs starts declining. If you are closer to the age of menopause, it is more challenging to harvest viable eggs.
Poor Sperm Quality
If the male has any abnormality in their sperm, it can lead to an unfertilized egg. It is essential to select high-quality sperm under magnification to produce good-quality embryos and have successful fertilization.
Selection of Wrong Embryo
It is vital to select a good-quality embryo to have a successful implantation. It is natural for the uterus to reject abnormal embryos. This means that the abnormal embryo cannot survive and will result in miscarriage or failure of implantation.
Issues with the Uterus
There might be problems in your uterus that cause IVF to fail. That is why it is critical to check your uterus for disorders such as hormones, fibroids, a tough cervix, an irregularly shaped uterus, chronic infections, fallopian tube enlargement, and other factors that might cause IVF failure.
Issues with Embryo Transfer
Transferring the embryos is a non-surgical and sensitive procedure. The embryos must be placed at the correct location in the uterus. Any changes in this procedure can fail an IVF cycle.
Problems with Maternal and Paternal Health
Maternal and paternal health matters for the success of the IVF cycle. Alcohol consumption, drug consumption, or smoking can lead to complications during pregnancy and implantation.
Sometimes, not managing diseases like hypertension and diabetes or having an unhealthy body weight can lead to a failed IVF.
Diagnosis
According to Dr. Pai, the following are some of the tests your IVF specialist will use to diagnose the cause of repeated IVF failure:
Evaluation of the Uterus
Your IVF specialist will perform a test to look at your uterus and fallopian tubes to check their overall health.
Sperm DNA Fragmentation
The test examines the DNA quality of the sperm. If sperm DNA fragmentation is exceptionally high, IVF may fail.
Immunologic Tests
These tests are used to diagnose immunologic disorders. It can aid in determining the cause of the previous unsuccessful IVF cycle before moving forward with the next one..
Other procedures, such as Endometrial Receptivity Assay and Preimplantation Genetic Testing, are also conducted to identify the uterus’ receptivity to implantation and analyze embryo chromosomes, respectively.
Treatment
The most crucial point in the treatment of repeated IVF failure is detecting the cause of the failures. If your doctor sees the reason for the losses, the treatment can get more accessible.
Your IVF doctor also needs to take care of things like selecting a healthy egg, sperm, and embryo, checking the environment of the uterus, doing the embryo transferring procedure with precision, etc.
Your doctor also needs to avoid the mistakes that happened in the previous IVF cycles that failed.
The treatment for repeated IVF failure is available at Bloom IVF Center in Mumbai.
Conclusion:
Failing at the IVF cycle repeatedly can affect your mental and emotional health. You may think that you will never be able to have a family.
However, it is essential to seek treatment after this happens so that you can find some other solution for your repeated IVF failures.
You can visit Dr. Hrishikesh Pai at Bloom IVF Center in Mumbai for further queries.
