Monday, February 25, 2008

So what are the odds...

An entire day in bed recovering from illness leads to lots of time to research the internet.

Mostly I find things confirming my low chances. Then this study appears to confirm that while giving a bit of hope:

If I am reading Abdalla H & Thum MY (2004)'s abstract correctly, women with FSH >20 (i.e., me), have a only a 3% live birth rate and pregnancy rate, however when broke down by age, women under 38 years of age odds went up to 16.7%.

16% sounds pretty darn good (although my levels are well over 20, so this might not apply AT ALL to me).

Also, the young women with high FSH had better stats for live births than 38+ year old women with FSH under 10. Granted these are women who are receiving treatment, not numbers on spontaneous conception.

What is a girl like me to think..... are my eggs just as good as the 38 year old eggs my friend has offered?

Quote from study's abstract:

"group A, FSH <10>20 IU/ml. Each group was stratified further into subgroups according to age, < or ="38">38 years. RESULTS: Both PR (A, 32.3%; B, 19.8%; C, 17.5%; and D, 3%) and LBR (A, 24.7%; B, 13.2%; C, 13.8%; and D, 3%) were significantly reduced in the higher FSH level groups. LBR was significantly higher in the younger subgroups (A, 32.2%; B, 21.8%; C, 20%; and D, 16.7%) as compared with the older subgroups (A, 12.1%; B, 8.3%; C, 10.5%; and D, 0%)."

The same authors seem to have a running theme on high FSH.

2 comments:

Lollipop Goldstein said...

It's so hard to know what to take out of all of these studies.

Thank you so much for answering the question on my blog!

Summer said...

Thanks for visiting and commenting on my blog! I've spent this morning catching up on yours posts.

As I understand your situation, you had part of your ovaries removed at 18, right? Which is the main reason for your high FSH (i.e. you don't have eggs because so much of your ovaries are missing) while the women in those studies have their ovaries, but there aren't many eggs in them. So, you may be right in saying that the younger women, high FSH stats might not apply to you.

Seems to me that you need to find a doctor who understands your specific situation so that you can get an idea of what your chances are. This was my dilemma, too, because for a long time I couldn't find a doctor who could diagnose my specific situation to give me an estimate on my chances of success with my eggs. And until I knew what that chance was for my eggs, it was hard for me to decide if taking a chance with using my 37 yr old cousin was worth it or if I was more comfortable trying to find someone unrelated but younger.

If you can find out what your chances are using your eggs, then it might become clearer whether you want to ask your 38 yr old friend to be donor. Because if your chances are 3% live birth and a 38 yr old is say, 30% live birth (I'm making that number up), then it might be worth it to you to try because it's ten times better than with your own eggs and you already have a possible donor.