Reply to Talk to me about numbers of fertilized eggs

Forum Index » Infertility Support and Discussion

Reply to "Talk to me about numbers of fertilized eggs"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thanks for the responses.  Please keep the good thoughts rolling in - I promise to do the same for all of you on your journeys.  On day two (today), we have 2 embryos at the 4-cell stage, 1 at the 3-cell stage, and 1 at the 8-cell stage.  Awaiting word on whether it'll be a day 3 or day 5 transfer.  [/quote]

With a low number of embryos (I was in the same situation, posted above), I would not risk waiting for day 5, and my guess is your RE won't want to do that either. Too much of a chance that they won't survive in the petri dish, while they might well survive inside you.

[b]The reason the other poster said higher number of embryos equals better chance of pregnancy is that you usually have more embryos to choose from[/b], and a greater chance that some will be top notch. But I've been told that ovarian response is not directly linked to egg quality, so even if you have few, they may be good. The only indicator they have for egg quality is age, although of course someone of a younger age could have worse eggs than someone who's older. It's simply that they can't test for quality, so they have to guess by age. FWIW, I'm 39 and while my response was comparatively low, my eggs seem to have been fine, as I got pregnant with twins on the first try.[/quote]

No, the reason why I posted it is because the data, [b]for all age groups[/b], show clear correlation between number of eggs retrieved and proportion of pregnancies achieved. Why is that, I don't claim to know.

http://www.advancedfertility.com/eggspregnancyrates.htm [/quote]

Fair enough, I shouldn't have said that's why you said it, but that those are the facts behind your statement. The link you posted confirms exactly what I said. They do hypothesize that there is a relation between egg quantity and egg quality, but when you read their page on that topic, it ultimately comes down to the fact that a woman with more eggs has a greater percentage of good ones - so again, it's a selection issue rather than an intrinsic link between quantity and quality.[/quote]

They hypothesize because they don't know - and nobody really knows. I am not sure why it is important what causes the correlation, though. The fact of the matter is - more eggs, greater likelihood of pregnancy (at least up to a point). You don't need to know why that is the case in order to gauge your own chances.[/quote]

What I meant is that they do offer hypotheses about the causes for the correlation between quantity and quality because, as I said above, they don't know for sure if there is an intrinsic link. Both quantity and quality, of course, are correlated with age, but it would be interesting to know to what extent there is a direct correlation between the two factors, because someone who is 37 but has a low response to the stims might have better egg quality than someone who is 40 and still produces more eggs. For now, it still looks like more eggs just give you better chances because you have a greater number of embryos to select from, not because you necessarily have better egg quality. Conversely, you could have few embryos, but they could be good quality. I brought this up because I thought it would be encouraging to OP, but she doesn't seem interested in this discussion.[/quote]

PP here again. Actually, the page you linked doesn't show such data for all age groups. They compare a 28 year old to a 42 year old, which is a very stark comparison. All they show is that there is a correlation between quantity and quality because both are also overall correlated with age. They still cannot explain why (or test for if) someone with a low response, in some cases, might have a higher percentage of good eggs than someone who produces more. Still, of course, someone who produces more eggs but has a lower percentage of good ones might still have a greater absolute number of good eggs than someone who produces a a low number but has a higher percentage of good ones, but this is not necessarily the case if the parameters aren't as far apart as between the 28 and the 42 year old. Bottom line is, though, that the odds for good eggs are higher when you produce more of them - yet you shouldn't assume your eggs are bad just because your number is low.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics