Is IVF safe for the mother?

Nowadays, IVF is a completely safe procedure for the patient. As I always say, and I love this example, IVF is what an egg donor does. If we had any evidence that this procedure may increase any risk later in her life, it would be very controverted from the ethical point of view to stimulate these young girls to obtain the eggs.

In regard to the treatment itself, of course,  anytime you do anything, there are some risks, but if you manage the case properly, these risks are very low. The main risk that you can have when you’re doing IVF are: having a haemorrhage, at the moment of the egg collection, which is a very low risk, it’s 0.1%. If you transfer more than 1 embryo, you may have a slightly higher risk of ectopic pregnancy because 1 of the embryos may travel through the tubes and may implant there, but also, the risk is very low.

One of the things that happen is hyperstimulation syndrome, which is very strange and quite a common situation nowadays. We have a lot of different tools to identify which patients may develop this problem. It basically is an exaggerated response of the ovaries producing hormones. Since this syndrome is related to the existence of the hCG in the body of the woman, you can trigger the ovulation with a different drug, freeze all the embryos.

I am proud to say that in our clinic, in the last 6-7 years, we did not have a single case of hyperstimulation syndrome despite being able to collect 20-30 eggs from a single patient sometimes. The risks are basically related to the effective management of the treatment. If you identify the risks, if you make the proper decisions, the risk should be close to zero.

Before performing IVF every person should check her health to clarify if she has any risks or contraindications for IVF because this is a serious procedure and of course any contraindications for carrying pregnancy. We need to pay attention to concomitant disorders. Sometimes we don’t permit us to do IVF right away when patients wish to, but we can do IVF a little bit later after compensation for some disease, for example diabetes mellitus or hypertension. One of the very frequently questions and fears is a question about oncological diseases after IVF – in this field first of all i I have to say that ovarian stimulation doesn’t lead to cancer formation but if person has already have malignant cells within her body some of them can unfortunately grow up so we need to be sure that there is no risk of malignancy especially breast, ovaries, uterus and other organs before they start ovarian stimulation but yet person has check her health and if there is no abnormalities, we can say that IVF will be safe for her.

IVF, in general, is a safe treatment but like in any other treatment, there are some risks that should be acknowledged and should be known by the patient. So they increase levels of hormones that increase their risk, for example, for thrombosis that are clot inside the vessels. Sometimes the ovaries can react or develop more follicles than expected that put the patients in a risk for what we call a hyperstimulation syndrome and other risks are related with the ovarian retrieval because we use a needle to go to pick up the eggs in the ovaries so it’s like any other risk in any other surgical procedure, so I mean infections, bleeding. Once the embryos are transferred, two classical complications are: the ectopic pregnancies in one side or twin pregnancies cause, yes, multiple pregnancies is not a good idea, and is always considered a complication of any IVF treatment.

No, IVF is safe for the mother. The only side effect is ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome which has become increasingly rare, so the IVF treatments are safe for the mother.