Why a Root Cause Analysis is often useless in patients with IVF failure

Many patientswho fail an IVF cycle, want the doctor to tell them exactly why the cycle failed. They want the doctor to get at the root cause , and this is completely logical. After all, once the root cause has been identified, the doctor will be able to fix the problem, and the next IVF cycle will succeed.Sadly, life doesn't work this way, because biological systems are complex, and it's not possible to get a simple answer to what seems to be a very simple question. This is because there are multiple interlocking parts , and it's not possible to tease them out individually to find out why a particular cycle failed.The reality is we can't even find out why a particular IVF cycle succeeded, but obviously when it succeeds everyone takes that for granted , and no one asks us why the cycle succeeded. But just like we can't answer why a particular embryo implanted successfully, we can't answer why a particular embryo didn ’t implant.Now it's very tempting to dolots of tests to find out what the “ underlying reason “ for the failure is . There are lots of complex expensive tests available, and doctors love doing these ! They include operations such as a hysteroscopy to check the uterine cavity, and an embryo biopsy to do a genetic analysis of the embryo. And these tests seem to make a lot of logical sense as well. After all , if you transfer an embryo into the uterus and it doesn ’t implant, clearly this means there’s either a problem with the embryo or with the endometriu...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs