How can I increase my HCG level ? An IVF patient's query

 

 

After the long two week wait ( 2ww), when patients do their HCG level in order to find out whether the IVF cycle has succeeded or not , they go to pieces when the HCG level is negative. One of the commonest questions patients ask is – Is there anything I can do to increase my HCG level ? They don’t want to accept the truth that a negative HCG means their cycle has failed,  because this means all their hopes and money and energy has gone down the drain .

They feel that if the doctor can do something to improve their HCG level , their pregnancy would be fine .

It breaks my heart when patients ask these questions ,because it clearly shows that they don't understand anything about IVF treatment , or how to interpret the HCG level .

This upsets me , because not only does this mean their doctor has not bothered to explain anything to them , it also means that they've been very passive and not done any homework for themselves .

The HCG level is a diagnostic marker for the health of the pregnancy . It is produced by the trophectoderm ( the future placental cells ) of the embryo , which means that there is nothing anyone can do to increase the HCG level . It’s because the pregnancy is not viable that the HCG level is low ! The low HCG level is not the problem – it is the result of an embryo which has failed to implant.

Yes, we can increase your HCG level by giving you an HCG injection , but obviously that is not going to serve any useful purpose .

A negative HCG is a reliable diagnostic marker of the fact that the IVF cycle has failed, and there’s nothing much we can do about it at this stage.

Every embryo has its own biological destiny , and the trouble is that we can only learn what this is two weeks after the embryo transfer , by checking the HCG level .

Before this result, just like the patient is completely clueless , so are we, because the uterus is still a black box area , and we cannot monitor embryo implantation as yet