Five reasons why Egg Collection for IVF may be unsuccessful

Egg collection is a routine procedure performed at all IVF clinics. The IVF doctor successfully retrieves eggs from a significant number of follicles that most patients produce. Sometimes, doctors may be unable to find any eggs after the egg collection. There are primarily five reasons why this happens.

If the hCG injection isn’t administered at the proper time or more than 36 hours have elapsed after hCG administration, the follicle may rupture before egg collection. Ruptured follicles may release the eggs in the follicular fluid of the pouch of Douglas behind the uterus. At the time of egg retrieval for IVF, the doctor may not be able to find any intact follicles and thus may not obtain the eggs.

Secondly, technical problems are likely to happen during egg collection for IVF. Due to morbid obesity or adhesions in the pelvic region, the ovaries may become inaccessible to the vaginal ultrasound probe.  Ovaries may also stay hidden behind the uterus. For a doctor lacking experience in performing follicular puncture, this can become a major problem. Furthermore, the absence of general anaesthesia, especially when the patient has a low tolerance for pain compounds the problem. The patient has severe complaints of pain upon performing vaginal manipulations.

For other reasons read http://blog.drmalpani.com/2012/12/why-you-may-not-get-eggs-during-your.html

Is it wise to undergo stem cell therapy for premature ovarian failure?

The desperation to have a baby finds its foothold firmly in patients who are suffering from ovarian failure. Using donor eggs is their only choice of medical treatment. However, even those who are well aware of this fact refuse to do it. A major reason for this is their religious belief, for instance, Muslim patients consider this to be against their religious dictates. Due to their desperation, it becomes easy for dishonest doctors to cheat them. Malpani Fertility Clinic recently encountered a patient who had been cheated by an apparent stem-cell expert.

The patient had been suffering from premature ovarian failure for several years. She had travelled around the globe to discover her chances of treatment. Despite being informed by doctors in the USA and the UK that her only choice lay in using donor eggs, she had staunchly refused to consider this option.

Upon hearing about stem cell therapy, she headed to India to try it out just in case it worked for her. A doctor promised to help her. She was cheated out of a huge sum of money to inject embryonic stem cells in her blood. The doctor claimed that these cells would somehow travel to her ovaries and change into eggs, thus enabling her to conceive with her own eggs. This so-called treatment has absolutely no veracity. I am shocked at the way doctors cheat unsuspecting patients. Get to know more about this scam at http://blog.drmalpani.com/2012/12/the-stem-cell-scam-for-patients-with.html\.

IMSI vs. ICSI: Myth busted!

It is widely believed that IMSI used in IVF is a better technique than ICSI though this claim is yet to be backed by rational evidence.

The smallest cell in the human body; a sperm from the male and the largest; an egg from the female, unite to fuse their genetic material together and create a new being.  There are approximately 20 – 150 million sperms in a normal human semen ejaculate, often with dissimilar appearances. Diversely structures and shapes of human sperms clearly stand out against most animal sperms which are perfectly shaped. At Malpani fertility clinic, to examine a sperm sample we stain the sperms and observe them under a microscope at high magnification to study their shapes. Researchers investigating male fertility were particularly curious to know whether the sperm’s shape would affect male fertility, leading to several studies intending to find out what a normal human sperm actually looked like.

Animals have identical looking sperms which makes it easy to distinguish abnormally shaped sperms. But reviews of several studies suggest that sperms in a human semen sample have a wide range of variability in their morphology, in a single ejaculate, several ejaculates from the same fertile male and those from other fertile males. It is, therefore, difficult to define the normal morphology of human sperm. With such high variability in the shape of the human sperm even from fertile males it is hard to comment on which sperm is abnormally shaped and which is not. Thus, sperm morphology cannot be used to gauge the fertility potential of men. To know how this impacts the debate of IMSI vs. ICSI read http://blog.drmalpani.com/2012/12/is-imsi-better-than-icsi.html

Indian Government Plays Spoilsport for IVF Tourism

Medical tourism in India is a leading enterprise and it is especially popular for reproductive medicine. This is well exemplified by patients all over the world coming to India for IVF treatments or for procedure like surrogacy.

Naturally, the Indian government is expected to uphold and advance medical tourism as it is an extremely good source of national revenue. Moreover, due to the considerably lower costs in India than is offered in the West, medical tourism can establish India as a leading centre for high quality medical facilities. On the contrary, though, the Indian government has spared no effort to create hindrances for IVF clinics.

Numerous patients create and store frozen embryos for themselves in IVF clinics worldwide. While opting for surrogacy, these embryos need to be shipped to India to the particular IVF clinic, which will then be implanted in the surrogate’s uterus. The transport of frozen embryos is a simple and routinely performed medical procedure. Sadly, Indian IVF clinics have been prevented from doing this for months by the Indian Customs Department with the complaint that the ICMR hasn’t clearly delineated the IVF clinics which are authorized to import embryos. Read more about this scenario at http://blog.drmalpani.com/2012/12/why-is-indian-government-creating.html.

More than meets the eye at free medical camps

From free fertility camps of IVF clinics for aspiring mothers to urology hospitals offering free screening for prostate cancer, free medical specialty camps offered by several hospitals are widely conducted everywhere.

Be it cataract surgery or family planning, there is no doubt as to the popularity of medical camps in India. Initially intended to provide medical services to poor patients residing in remote areas, medical camps made it possible for rural citizens to avail of health care services without having to travel far to a city. Run by philanthropists and charitable organizations, most of these camps were relatively inexpensive methods of ensuring that healthcare services were available even to the poor.

It appears that medical camps are more of a promotional campaign for hospitals these days. Needless to say, free camps offered by hospitals generate a lot of public attention, bringing to emphasis their dedication to community service. Beware though, that many of these medical camps might be cheating gullible patients with their ulterior motive of helping hospitals build a database of potential patients to whom they can sell their services. Many complaints have been received about their misdiagnosis and profit mongering over-treatment for a health condition that was better off untouched. More facts revealed at http://blog.drmalpani.com/2012/12/why-free-medical-camps-can-be-bad-for.html