- Successful treatment and occurrence of pregnancy: This commonly occurs, when, the identified problems are successfully treated with either the drugs and or the operation and other adjunctive treatment in either the man or woman. Such successful treatment may commonly result in a pregnancy with six months, to the joy of all. The success of treatment is common with couples who were consistent in taking their drug and who follow advice on regular follow-up for at least six months period. Failure to the conventional treatment is common, in couple, who default in taking medication or refuse to avoid what had been advised to be avoided the conventional treatment may fail, in the woman while treatment was with drugs or operation. The follow-up will always include drugs to further improve her ovulation capacity and a counselling for the best time to focus the sexual intercourse of usually three times weekly until pregnancy occurs. In all cases, the follow up is for duration not longer than 1 year of the treatment. If at the end of 1 year pregnancy has not occurred, usually other methods are used to ensure that pregnancy occurs. This is explained to the couples at the start of the treatment.
- Failure of treatment with the conventional treatment method: The reason for the failure of the conventional treatment may be any of what had been mentioned above but there are the following in some cases.
- Default in taking treatment or follow-up of the instructions which may often include what to avoid like alcohol intake etc or either or both the man and his wife.
- Default in one partner not accepting to be screened or not partaking of the treatment based on the problem identified and usually discussed with the individual at St. Augustine Medical Centre.
- Concurrent exposure to multiple treatments from more than one physical but worse still, from the traditional practitioners at the same time, who may use dangerous drugs
- Genuine failure of the identified problems to respond to the chosen conventional methods which often is common in the following circumstances like
- Combined moderate to severe male and female casual factors like anovulation with severe make oligospermia or tubal blockage with even mild oligosermia or female perimenopausal anovulatory states.
- Poor response to the treatment of either a male factor like oligospermmia or female factor like operations on the fallopian tubes to create functional potency causing the infertility
- Advance age in the woman particularly those perimenopausal and menopausal women even when there are no other factors causing the infertility.
Most of these factors listed respond much better to ART and not the conventional methods.
- Resort to Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART): The failure of the conventional treatment methods to bring about pregnancy, means the methods have failed to successfully facilitate the union of a freshly released egg and a normal sperm for fertilization and subsequently pregnancy to occur because the impediments to this union are persisting in spite of the treatment. The only logical alternative in such situation are, whatever method could by-pass these impediments or barrier to the union of the egg and sperm to allow fertilization and pregnancy to cccur. Quite often the method to facilitate this union of sperm and egg (to secure a pregnancy) is what is known as Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART) which has several variants or type. Let us share some facts about ART as it is practiced at St. Augustine Medical Centre IVF Unit.
