What You Need to Know Before Starting Fertility Treatment

Infer­til­i­ty is the inabil­i­ty to con­ceive a child after two years of active attempts. Doc­tors do not rec­om­mend wait­ing for an inde­pen­dent onset of preg­nan­cy longer than this peri­od. What you need to know before seek­ing med­ical help, and what mis­takes to avoid? we asked the doc­tor to answer these ques­tions: obste­tri­cian-gyne­col­o­gist and repro­duc­tive spe­cial­ist Balyshko Alexan­der Mikhailovich.

Mistake 1: Confidence in the treatment method before the examination

Often peo­ple are sure in advance that only IVF can help them. How­ev­er, some types of infer­til­i­ty are cur­able, and after a course of ther­a­py or minor surgery, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of spon­ta­neous con­cep­tion is restored. The oth­er extreme is when peo­ple are sure that every­thing can be cured quick­ly, so they wait for the right time to con­ceive for diag­no­sis, some­times years. Before a med­ical exam­i­na­tion, you should not set your­self up for one or anoth­er result.

Detailed infor­ma­tion about the caus­es of infer­til­i­ty and the treat­ment of its var­i­ous types at the link: https://mdclinics.com.ua/uslugi/lechenie-besplodiya/

Mistake 2: delaying treatment for a long time

Some­times a cou­ple, already know­ing the diag­no­sis, delays treat­ment for too long. The prob­lem is that many dis­eases can be suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed only until they cause irre­versible changes. The longer such a dis­ease devel­ops, the more dif­fi­cult it is to treat, and the less like­ly it is to restore repro­duc­tive func­tion.

It is not rec­om­mend­ed to post­pone the use of ART (assist­ed repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies) for a long time: the effec­tive­ness of IVF decreas­es sharply after 40 years. This is due to phys­i­o­log­i­cal changes: an increase in the den­si­ty of the egg shell, deple­tion of the ovar­i­an reserve. The opti­mal age for ART is con­sid­ered to be up to 35, up to a max­i­mum of 40 years. This does not mean that lat­er con­cep­tion with ART is not pos­si­ble, but it may take much more effort and time to achieve it.

Mistake 3: unhealthy lifestyle

Lifestyle direct­ly affects the effec­tive­ness of treat­ment. The soon­er it is changed to a health­i­er side, the high­er the chances of suc­cess. It is not required to devote your whole life only to con­cep­tion, but it is high­ly desir­able to give up bad habits, estab­lish a work and rest regime and get rid of phys­i­cal inac­tiv­i­ty, if there is such a prob­lem.

Action plan

So, what should be done if infer­til­i­ty is sus­pect­ed?

1. Con­tact a repro­duc­tive health cen­ter and under­go a med­ical exam­i­na­tion for both part­ners.
2. Choose a clin­ic respon­si­bly. Approach this respon­si­bly. Col­lect infor­ma­tion about avail­able med­ical insti­tu­tions, take an inter­est in patient reviews, the rep­u­ta­tion of doc­tors, and tech­ni­cal equip­ment. Find out what diag­nos­tic capa­bil­i­ties the clin­ic has, whether it is pos­si­ble to under­go a com­plete diag­no­sis in one place, or you will have to go around half the city. Take the time to col­lect infor­ma­tion, it will save you a lot of time in the future.
3. With the diag­no­sis estab­lished, decide on the start of treat­ment. Con­sult with a repro­duc­tive spe­cial­ist, find out about the finan­cial and time costs, decide how much time you need to pre­pare, com­pare this with your work sched­ule.
4. Think of a plan A and plan B, plan B may not be use­ful, but being ready for it will reduce anx­i­ety, which means that the chances of suc­cess will increase.