Answer from: Halyna Strelko, MD
It depends on the protocol. There is a medication named Elonva corifollitropin alfa. I like it a lot, it is one injection that works for seven days or even more than eight days so, you do one injection and that’s it. After you only come for an ultrasound and check how your follicles are growing. Also depends on, for example, if we are doing the protocol with clomid or letrozole, also we can decrease the number of injections. If it is standard protocol: everyday injection – it is one injection per day of FSH and after, in the middle of the stimulation, we add antagonists so two injections per day and sometimes we have growth hormone making it three injections per day. It is a little bit difficult for patients.
On the other hand, most of the modern medication for stimulation is a very smart system like a pen and very very small needle, and most of the time you even do not feel anything or feel like a little bite so, not very painful. Something it is more psychological – patients are afraid but it is not painful and they are more afraid that it is painful. To decrease the number of injections, we have the protocol with this Elonva – we have one injection in the beginning, four injections of antagonists and probably one or two FSH injections and trigger so, in total 8-9. It is not a lot.
Answer from: Scott Nelson, Professor
The whole variety of different strategies that you can use and you can do IVF with essentially three injections. It seems ridiculous but it is possible. There’s a way that you can do that with as low as three injections, however, that’s not really routinely done and for many people in the UK, they’ll be having many more injections than that. They might have 11 days of injections of the gonadotropins and if they’re using antagonists on top, it can be potentially another six days of that. That’s 17 injections plus the trigger – might be kind of 17 injections so that’s 18. I can’t do my math in my head there so eleven plus six plus one so that’s 18. That’d be gonna say you’ve got an extreme of three which I know we came up with a protocol years ago that facilitated that well something like 18 is average but it may be more than that.
