The vast majority of in vitro fertilization treatments goes easily, without any inconvenience, but there is always the risk involved in any medical procedure, such as complications and side effects. Among the IVF complications, the most frequent is the failure of the treatment itself, we can also mention the risk of an ectopic pregnancy and multiple pregnancy.
Some other uncommon errors can take place during in vitro fertilization. By chance, some other woman’s eggs can be implanted into your uterus with no knowledge of yourself, or your eggs can be fertilized by someone else’s sperm rather than that of your partner’s.
For example, a Caucasian lady in the United Kingdom who undertook the in vitro fertilization ended up giving birth twins; one of whom was black and the other one white. It was then when parents realized that sperm of some other patient had fertilized one of the woman’s eggs. The parents involved made a decision to raise both kids as their own.
A few years ago, the United States had a rare in vitro complication case which got a lot of attention; a single woman entered in an in vitro fertilization treatment, sperm and egg donors were arranged, but during the process, another couple’s embryo was implanted into her uterus. The doctors involved realized their error but decided to keep silent about it, but the news still managed to leak out. The woman gave birth the baby and the couple, whose sperms and eggs were used in the embryo, sued her and the clinic, to obtain custody of the disputed child.
Hospitals across America and other countries are trying to take steps to make sure that mistakes like these does not occur and to avoid any in vitro complications that may occur in the process. Measures have been taken, to decrease the frequency of errors that happen during in vitro fertilization.
To avoid a multiple pregnancy, it’s a common practice to implant two or three embryos and the rest frozen it for extra use. Frozen embryos are as high-quality as standard embryos and don’t cause any problem in the development of children conceived by this method. Although the decrease of embryo decreases the accomplishment rate, it is safer to proceed this way since the risk of multiple pregnancy is considerably reduced. Further methods of dipping the risk of multiple births are reducing the dosage of fertility medication and blastocyst transmits reducing the risk of generic in vitro complications.