IVF For The Over 40s

IVF For The Over 40s

Dr Knight has been using medications and supplements in stimulation treatment approaches to maximise pregnancy chances for women in their 40's since establishing Demeter Fertility.

Female age is very important in consideration of probability for getting pregnant. More problems getting pregnant as women age is well documented and very apparent in our society. The real issue is egg quality which translates into embryo quality after fertilisation. As women wait longer to have children, more couples have fertility problems due to a decline in egg quality, and due to other issues that are more common in older women. Many couples end up needing advanced treatments such as IVF to help overcome the age related decline in egg quality.

Yet even with IVF, live baby chances are still less than 50% after six egg collection cycles. Dr Knight is one of the most experienced fertility specialists in Australia in the use of Growth Hormone having managed over 400 cycles of GH stimulated IVF/ICSI since 2005.The publication of the Tesarik paper in Human Reproduction showed a five times increase in the number of babies born in women over 40 who used growth hormone when compared to women who did not.

Dehydroepiandrosterone or DHEA for short, often suggested to counter the effects of ageing, might increase successful pregnancy rates in women undergoing treatment for infertility. The first controlled study on the effects of DHEA found that women being treated for infertility who also received supplements of this hormone were three times more likely to conceive than women being treated without it. Not only were women who combined infertility treatment with DHEA more likely to conceive, the researchers discovered, they were also more likely to experience a healthy pregnancy and delivery. In the DHEA group, there was a 23% live birth rate as opposed to a 4% rate in the control group. More than that, of the pregnancies in the DHEA group, all but one ended in healthy deliveries.