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ShareNY Times raises concerns about the high doses of hormones in In Vitro Fertilization.
Many future parents find themselves needing some extra help to conceive a child. IVF or In Vitro Fertilization is one of those methods. While the actual odds for conception are not great, many doctors use high doses of hormones to stimulate egg production. Recently, questions about how much hormone should be used because of some severe side effects the hormones used in these high amounts may cause. Read about this below
High Doses of Hormones Faulted in Fertility Care
By JACQUELINE MROZ
Published: July 16, 2012
Two days after Debra Demidon underwent in vitro fertilization, she gained more than 30 pounds in fluid and suddenly was struggling to breathe.
Doctors diagnosed severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), a complication seen in some women who undergo fertility treatment. It landed Ms. Demidon in the hospital for five days; doctors ultimately drained 6.5 liters of fluid from her body. She missed three weeks of work, and by the time it was over, she and her husband had spent all of their savings.
“It was my first time doing IVF, and I’ll never do it again,” said Ms. Demidon, 28, a quality assurance specialist in Cayuga, N.Y. “It was awful. When you have that much fluid in you, it puts pressure on everything.”
OHSS is a little-known complication of fertility treatments that rely on high doses of hormones, which are standard in the United States and the United Kingdom; the syndrome is not the only health problem to be linked to in vitro fertilization. Fertility clinics in Europe and Japan have turned to a safer, low-dose form of IVF, but clinics here have largely resisted on the grounds that the success rates for low-dose IVF are not as high.