NYT story about high stim doses...

[Anonymous]

I saw this story in the NYT about high doses of stims and OHSS, concerns about Lupron, and whether low-dose IVF is a better option. Not much that's news to us familiar with IVF, but thought I'd post:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/health/research/high-doses-of-hormones-add-to-ivf-complications.html?src=recg

[Anonymous]

I wonder what exactly counts as low-dose? I know at Dominion they shoot for 8-12 eggs, but also use Lupron.

[Anonymous]

I was on lurpon, menopur and bravelle and had 6 eggs. The problem with this type of article and that for the vast majority of women, myself included, we have no idea going into IVF if its high or low dose. I just took what my dr recommended. I had questions but the dosing amount wasn't one of them. Unfortunately this seems to be one of those things that you don't really know if the dose was "too high" until you end up sick or in the hospital. My case was different in that I had almost no side effects from stims but I did get pregnant from IVF and then almost immediately my ovaries really swelled up and I developed mild OHSS (did not require a dr to drain fluid). the nurse said that its pretty common to happen AFTER a pregnancy occurs even though everything up till point was easy. It really is so much trial and error which is what makes it scary to me.

[Anonymous]

I was also confused by what low stim IVF means in the context of this article. I also thought it was funny they quoted Schattman from Cornell as being opposed to it when they are not that aggressive with stims. One of their doctors told my friend that his goal is around 6 or 8 (can't remember which) eggs.

[Anonymous]

Dumb question, but isn't the goal typically the most number of eggs that are of good quality? In other words, if you are shooting for a high number of eggs, isn't the danger less success (not just OHSS)?

[Anonymous]

Sorry, to clarify:

Don't doctors typically aim for the most number of quality eggs, which means that having too much stims would icnrease the number of eggs but reduce quality?

[Anonymous]

I was also curious about what high vs low stim meant. There are super low stim protocols, not natural cycle protocol but some stimulation (Muasher Center does this). But I did "regular" stim, on the low side because I had OHSS risk factors, and during each of 2 cycles got 6-8 eggs (second cycle was successful, also resulted in 5 frozen embryos). Even though we kept it on the lower side, I did get severe OHSS on the successful cycle and had life-threatening complications. If I ever need to do a full IVF for another child (if the FETs don't work, which I'm about to try shortly), I'll probably only do natural cycle.