In Vitro Fertilisation

Hi! 

I am Dr. Shalini Yadav, consultant obs and gynae fertility specialist. I will be talking about a very simple and common question, Why IVF? Is IVF for all and how it works? What is the success rate in actual? How a lady gets ovulated and gets pregnant naturally? In the natural cycle and in an average female who has a menstrual cycle of 28 days, there is the production of the hormone from the brain which also causes the follicular production. As follicular grows, they do produce a hormone which is an estrogen. One follicle dominates and starts producing estrogen. Now sperm travels from your vagina and meets the egg released from the tube. There fertilisation occurs.

And embryo travels all the way to uterine and that is how the implantation occurs. If the lady is pregnant, she does not get cycle otherwise on 14th day, she will get her menstrual cycle. So, the patient asks that IVF is for all? My answer is No. IVF is for those who have undergone any tubal surgeries or any related problems. It depends on pathology and morphology of the sperm. Sperm count also matters for the same. Because it can make difficult for you to conceive. So, IVF is not for all. So, only 5% of couple require this treatment. Doctor needs to check whether the problem is, in female or male. If the problem is with male, then IVF is required. In female, there are 2 major causes - 1st is tubal pathology like you may have tubal blockage, infection in the tubes, tuberculosis or any previous surgery in the tubes.

We encounter lots of patient with premature ovarian failure. Now how IVF works and what is the success rate? The success rate does not depend on the doctor or the centre. It is all about the couple success rate. In IVF, we stimulate the ovary but it is a controlled ovarian stimulation. Under anesthesia, we take out all the eggs under ultrasound guidance. Then we fertlise them with sperm. Or we do ICSI. Where one sperm is injected in one egg. If the lady has 10 eggs, she might not have 10 embryos. We check fertilisation on the gap of 48-72 hours. So, the success depends that in how much of the good amount a couple will make the embryos. And in IVF, the success rate is not more than 40-60%. So, a couple should understand that they are dealing with their own eggs and sperm. If there is the uterine abnormality then we go for surrogacy. Or if the eggs are really poor then we only go for the donor cycle. But we prefer natural IVF cycle. We are getting lots of success rate. We just discuss with the patient, if there is any such problem.

Thank You.