Infertility: What You Need To Know?

Hello Friends!

I am Dr. Aradhana Gupta. I am an IVF specialist. And I want to discuss something about infertility. In infertility, I would like to highlight the PCOD. PCOD is very common. I think each infertility specialist have more than 30%, in fact, more than 50% of patients with PCOD. And this PCOD is very important not from the infertility purpose as well as from our health aspects. Because it has long-term effects on your health. So, every person who is diagnosed from PCOD must be treated for the fertility of course as well as for the further health risk. What is actually PCOD? It is becoming more common, especially in urban areas, in metros because it is associated with lifestyle as well as your eating habits. And here what happens is, there is an abnormality in your hormones associated with the insulin resistant that means hormones which regulated your sugar control. And this, in turn, causes your fertility hormone derangement.

So, some hormones are high and some are low which should be at the proper balance. So, here this causes obviously some problem in your egg formation and your egg is not forming on time and it doesn't form at all in your cycle. And that is why your periods are irregular. Some have the mild effect of it. Some have the problem of no menses at all. They have periods only after giving some medicines. In such cases, obviously, eggs will not form. They will not be going to conceive. So, they will have difficulty in conceiving. Most of the patients, they can change their lifestyle that means you add exercise at least for 1 hour in your daily routine. And some changes in diet so, you have to say no to the fast foods and oily food. Calorie intake should be adjusted. And take lots of fresh fruits. And then if you reduce even the 5% of body weight, you may conceive within 6 months. So, diet and lifestyle have a very important role in PCOD but there is another variation that is the thin PCOD.

Thin PCOD, they are not having the high BMI but still, they have PCOD. So, how is it diagnosed? It can be diagnosed, No.1 with ultrasound. No.2 your cycle regularity. And No.3 your blood test and some characteristics which shows you have high androgen levels or high male hormones. So, in ultrasound, what do you see? Ovaries are big. They have multiple cysts. And these multiple cysts are immature eggs. And egg doesn't come out. And that is why they don't have periods on time. So, what is the treatment? No.1: Lifestyle modification and diet. No.2: Some medications which help in egg formation and control of insulin resistance. If even after this, you are not able to conceive then we have a simple method known as IUI. When an egg is forming, we give injections so that it can come out. And after 36 hrs of this injections, we inject your husband's semen after processing inside your uterus.

So, most of the PCOD patient conceive with simple techniques. But very few patients like endometriosis or tubes are not good, they may undergo IVF. So, what is IVF? Means, fertilization is happening outside of your body. And here we give some hormones injections for 8-10 days where they help in you egg formation. When these eggs are formed, we take out them with the very simple method, with the help of ultrasound. With all these eggs, we fertilize them with your husband's sperm. After 2-3 days, we transfer these embryos which are formed after 3 days into your womb, if everything seems good. And this will increase the success rate by 30-40%. So, in such cases, pregnancy occurs within 2-3 cycles. Because the main problem is eggs formation and the fertilization is not happening. And when we implant embryos, they get pregnant very fast. So, in PCOD you have to take care of your health, your diet, your lifestyle and if you are not able to conceive, please consult your gynecologist. She will give you some medicines which will help you in conceiving. And most importantly, you should try early pregnancy. As age advances, PCOD may cause a problem for infertility. And even with the IVF, you may get the problems. Thanks a lot and for further information or if you want to know more about PCOD, you can contact me either by Lybrate

Thank you!