Some answers about assisted reproduction

Specialists from the British Hospital gave a lecture to clear doubts about pregnancy and fertility. Under the slogan “Fertility: Assessing fertility and infertility factors”, doctors Marisa Dellepiane and Maite Moldes held a lecture for members of the British Hospital, aimed at clearing doubts to those who have not yet sought pregnancy or have not been able to conceive. In a distended way, and from the questions and concerns of the participants, the members of the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics shared information and guided those present. “Eighty percent of the success or failure of a fertilization depends on the ovule and not so much on the sperm”, said Dellepiane and recalled that “the best ovules are those that come first”, so the result will depend “on the ovarian reserve and the age” of the woman. In the same way, she maintained that “the main cause of reproductive disorders is that couples begin to look for pregnancies at advanced ages”. “I have assisted reproduction at the British Hospital since 1994 and consultations due to difficulty in conception have always been increasing. The cause of this increase is mainly due to the increasingly late search for pregnancy. This determines that when the couple begins to look for their first child, almost always after the age of 30 and many times later, we find multiple difficulties that are not seen in the group of couples under 30 years” she said. “When the ovules are larger, it´s more complicated” she said, adding that other factors such as weight, stress or sexual life also exist, which condition the result and affect the success or failure of the fertilization process. The specialists also raised alternatives. “The passage of time is inexorable. There´s the preservation of fertility: we obtain the female gametes and keep them. It's like freezing time” said Moldes. While the process with own eggs shows a low rate, with donated eggs, it gives a high pregnancy rate. At the same time, a high rate of abortions and chromosomal abnormalities is registered with own ovules, as opposed to a low rate of both with donated ovules. “In Uruguay all the procedures available in the world are carried out. For many years we`ve had infrastructure and professionals to do all the techniques that scientific knowledge has managed to put into practice”, said Dellepiane. “At the British Hospital the couple with infertility is fully studied and low-complexity assisted reproduction treatments have been done since many years ago” she recalled. The duration of assisted reproduction treatments “varies greatly from one couple to another. There’re couples who soon after consulting achieve pregnancy, while others for different reasons need years to achieve it. Anyone of the procedures are done within a month, but the set-up before entering the program takes more time and when the treatments fail they have to be repeated”. Artificial insemination, she reported, has a pregnancy rate per cycle of 18% while in vitro fertilization can offer rates of up to 50% depending on the age group.