• Question: can the ivf go wrong in the woman

    Asked by nfmm3382 to Claire, Greg, Jane, Jo, Nuruz, Vicki on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by xxsozxx11.
    • Photo: Claire O'Donnell

      Claire O'Donnell answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Very occasionally in the past there have been occasions in which either the eggs/sperm from different couples have got mixed up and very rarely it has happened that an embryo was implanted in the wrong woman. Here’s a link to the story of what happened last year http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8100548.stm I
      Obviously there are meant to be really strict rules about checking all samples with two people at a time, colour coding samples etc.
      It’s a terrible thing for everyone involved. Imagine how you’d feel – awful if you were the people in the lab and infinately worse if you were pregnant with the ‘wrong’ embryo or your egg had been fertilised with the wrong sperm. It’s bad enough when it happens but for many couples they don’t have loads of eggs or embryos to have ‘spares’ to have another chance of getting pregnant again. How would you feel if the woman who had your embryo wnated to keep the baby or equally, didn’t want to keep the pregnancy.
      IVF hospitals have especially trained counsellors who can help people think through all these issues. Thankfully it’s very very rare.

    • Photo: Vicki Onions

      Vicki Onions answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hello
      IVF doesn’t work all the time (in fact, i think success rates are about 50%) so in that respect it can go wrong – either the sperm doesn’t fertilise the eggs and so no embryos are produced or it can be that the embryo(s) put back into the woman don’t implant and therefore the woman doesn’t become pregnant.
      But if you mean, can something go wrong medically, then again yes it can but thankfully i think this is relatively rare. Women can be given hormone treatments to get lots of eggs to grow in one cycle so that lots can be collected in one go to do IVF on. Some women react badly to this and suffer what is called “ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome” – this can be extremely dangerous for the woman affected and, (correct me more knowledgable scientists if i’m wrong) it can be fatal if not caught and treated early enough.
      Hope this helps, but i think some of the other scientists will give you a more informative answer!

    • Photo: Jo Broadbent

      Jo Broadbent answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hi there

      The woman has to inject herself with hormones to make several eggs grow in her ovaries. If too many eggs grow, she can get ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. This can be dangerous and result in being admitted to hospital. In very serious cases it can cause death. This very rare though.

      Jo

    • Photo: Greg FitzHarris

      Greg FitzHarris answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Hi there,
      Well, unfortunately it can. The process of getting the eggs from the woman is quite a big deal, and involves giving the woman injections to ‘stimulate’ her ovaries to make lots of eggs (10 or so), followed by surgery to extract the eggs from the ovary (using a needle which is inserted into the vagina and out into the ovaries). All the normal ‘risks’ of surgery apply – including the possibility that there might be a bit of an infection afterwards. Actually, though, the more common problem in IVF involves the hormone injections — in some cases there can be bad side-effects of these. Theyre not extremely common — but can be quite severe (very rare – but it has been known for a woman to die from this).

      So, yes, it can go wrong. Even if itgoes smoothly, IVF is a big deal for the woman, and she really has to want kids very much ion order to go through with it. To end on a lighter note, though… im sure that those who had it and sucessfully had babies would say it was worth it.

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