What are the associated risks with IVF? - Dr. Sumana Gurunath of Cloudnine Hospitals

This is a very important question and that is because there are a lot of myths and misconceptions among the public thinking that IVF is very risky, painful and there are a lot of side effects and things like that. So it is very important to address these things before embarking on the IVF process because of these myths and misconceptions, a lot of people hesitate to start IVF itself especially when it is not necessary. So before we begin to understand the risks, I would say that IVF is much safer than undergoing a laparoscopy or getting a caesarian section done. So coming to the misconceptions, a lot of people think that hormonal injections that we give have lot of side effects. These are purified medications which are very well tolerated ad hardly have any problems you can take about 6 cycles of IVF cycles without any side effects, the second procedure is the egg retrieval procedure itself. This is relatively simple. There is no cut or any incision made in the tummy. But is just a needle that is going in the vagina and the eggs are sucked out. Sometimes there are risks of bleeding or infections but the risks are less than 0.5%. The next important complication is ovarian hyperstimulation. We need about 10 or 15 eggs to do an IVF cycle, we don’t need too many eggs. But there are some people who are predisposed to produce too many follicles. So this is called as ovarian hyperstimulation where the ovaries are enlarged with multiple eggs. So we get almost 25 or 30 or 40 eggs sometimes if there is overstimulation and this causes the whole ovary to enlarge and this increases the estradiol in the blood and the capillaries become leaky and there is fluid accumulation in the tummy and the lungs and it causes a lot of problems. So on this regard to day, ovarian hyperstimulation must be prevented and it should not happen. So it is very important to predict who are the people who are likely to develop these problems before and to take adequate steps to prevent these problems, which we always do. So the first is to do a mild stimulation protocols and the secondly to use a lot of alternative medications which help us to achieve good pregnancy rates to prevent these problems from happening and your doctors will be doing the same or prevent these complications. Following this, the outcome of IVF that is miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies. Miscarriages are almost the same as what you would get. So the older you are, the more likely you are to miscarry. So your miscarriages rates are same irrespective of the method you use to conceive. Ectopic pregnancy slightly higher risk is there in IVF pregnancy. Following this last complications is there is a lot of misconception that the IVF children are abnormal and complain to have a lot of birth defects and they don’t do well at school and things like that. But today what you have to understand that even in children who are born with natural spontaneous pregnancies there is a 3% chance if abnormalities in them. In IVF conceived births the risk of these birth defects go upto about 5 or 6%. Probably this is due to a genetic kind of factor that may be present in some couples like sever male factor or those who are undergoing ICSI. But otherwise the rest of the general population, the risks are almost similar to that of natural conceptions.