Many women are worried about the risks and complications of IVF, and tragically, they don’t seem to know much about these , which is why they worry about all the wrong things—for example, that they will put on weight or develop breast cancer—because they are so scared about the side-effects of the hormones that are used for IVF treatment, and they feel that the doctor is pumping them with all these injections, which will cause them long-term side effects, such as ovarian failure.
This is false because we use only natural hormones for IVF treatment in order to rescue the eggs that would otherwise have died! Because IVF treatment is now so standardised, the risk of medical complications during the treatment itself has now become extremely low, especially in a good clinic.
In fact, today the biggest risk of IVF is an iatrogenic complication—one created by the doctor! This is the risk of multiple pregnancies, and this includes twin pregnancies as well!
Now this may not sound very intuitive, because many patients naively think that a twin pregnancy is the best possible outcome of an IVF treatment—you create an instant family, and you get two babies for the price of one, so you don’t have to go back for another cycle!
While a twin pregnancy sounds like a great idea, and it’s true that twins look cute when they are toddlers, the reality is that a twin pregnancy is a high-risk pregnancy because the chances of complications during that pregnancy are so high. These include problems like miscarriages, preterm premature rupture of membranes, and premature labor. The trouble is that most IVF specialists are blissfully unaware of the complications that they create by transferring so many embryos at a time, because once the patient gets pregnant, their job is done! It’s the OB who needs to deal with all these complications, and so does the patient! The doctor who bears the brunt of this is the paediatrician, because when these babies are born prematurely (as so many of them are), they end up in a NICU (neonatal intensive care nit).
About 80% of babies in the NICU today are a result of prematurity because of IVF treatment! This is tragic because not only is neonatal intensive care really expensive, it can be heartbreaking for parents because your little baby is completely helpless, and you are never sure what the outcome is going to be! Even if these babies do graduate from the NICU, many of these babies will have lifelong problems, such as visual problems because of ROP (retinopathy of prematurity ) and mental handicaps because their brains aren’t properly developed. Because they are so fragile, they will often end up with many medical complications and will need frequent paediatric care during the first 2 or 3 years of their ives. Some of these neurological problems are never correctable, as a result of which these babies actually end up becoming liabilities, and all because the IVF doctor was greedy and wanted to maximise his clinic’s success rate by putting too many embryos back at one time. The truth is that the IVF doctor often doesn’t care about the long-term outcome because he’s got you pregnant and can add you to his success statistics.
However, you do care, and that’s why you should insist that the doctor not transfer more than one single top-quality blastocyst at a time, so that you end up with the desired outcome of IVF treatment—a healthy, normal full-term baby—rather than one with all kinds of complications because of prematurity! This can be heartbreaking, especially when you realise this was completely unnecessary since the risk was introduced by the doctor!
Need more guidance !
Please get your doubts resolved free using our chatbot which is powered by AI based on Dr Malpani’s 40 years of clinical expertise and experience at https://www.drmalpani.com/chat-w-chatbot/index.html. This will ensure you’re on the right path and potentially save significant costs in the long run.