Women with failed IVF at risk of heart disease

Hyderabad: The risk of heart diseases occurring in women who undergo in vitro fertilisation (IVF) that is unsuccessful is found to be on the high side. Six per 1,000 women can develop heart diseases and, according to experts, this is because injections that are used to stimulate the ovaries increase the risk of blood clotting.

According to a recent study those who repeat the procedure several times because they have failed to conceive in earlier attempts are at greater risk.

Dr Nirmala Aggarwal, IVF specialist in the city explains, “Hormone injections called gonadotropins, used to stimulate the ovaries to produce more than one egg a month, are found to increase the risk of blood clotting. These drugs are found to damage the heart by raising the risk of clots or changing how the body controls blood pressure. For this reason, those who have failed IVF treatment more than three times are advised not to opt for it further.”

The failure or success of the IVF procedure depends on multiple factors such as age of the patient, ovarian reserve, egg and sperm quality and, most important, the air quality in the laboratory and of course the expertise of the personnel carrying out the procedure.

The success rate in India is 50 to 55 per cent in the first attempt and around 80 to 90 per cent in the third attempt. Women are thus opting for more cycles to ensure success.

Dr Vijaya Reddy, senior IVF specialist, says that “in successful IVF procedures these problems are not encountered and it is only a concern in continuous failed cycles.”

For this reason many women are advised to not go for extremely high numbers as it affects their health. The West has opted for more than 10 cycles and it was found to have a debilitating affect on the heart, and hence these warnings have been issued, he adds.

The study found that two-thirds of the 50,000 women who were followed up for a decade had undergone more than three cycles and had continuously failed to conceive.