Whenever an IVF cycle fails , patients demand answers, and doctors will oblige them by ordering tests to pinpoint the reason why the cycle failed , and why the embryo didn’t implant.
This seems to be a very logical thing to do , because the hope is that more tests will give us more information, and once we know what the problem was, we will be able to find a solution/
However, this is actually completely flawed thinking , and more is not better .
Remember that the very fact that there are so many tests which are ordered means none of them work well . Also, common sense will tell you that if the tests did provide useful information, then we would routinely do all the tests before starting the first IVF cycle , because it doesn’t make sense to wait for an IVF cycle to fail and then to run these tests .
The reality is that our Technology has many limitations , and we cannot find out the reasons for failed implantation . This is hardly surprising , because this is a black box area in reproductive medicine, After all, it’s impossible to track the fate of a microscopic ball of cells once it has been transferred inside the uterus . Implantation is a complex biological process ( which involves many undiscovered molecular signals involved in embryo-endometrium coss-talk, and it’s not possible to analyse all these variables. Yes, it’s a hot area of research, but we can’t use IVF patients as guinea pigs !
The major problem is not just that these tests are extremely expensive . What’s worse is that they don’t provide any useful information at all , and in fact they can make a bad situation even worse, because they create confusion. When you get an abnormal test result , we don’t know whether it’s of any clinical significance or not, or if it’s just another red herring. The doctor now has to dig many holes in order to get to the bottom of the problem, but most of these are just rabbit holes, which end up wasting a lot of time money and energy, because they are dead-ends.
In any case, this is a poor quality question
A far better question would be – What do I do to increase by chances of getting pregnant in my next IVF cycle. This question is easier to answer, because it’s easier to bypass problems , rather than identify them !
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