Persistence is the Single Most Important Denominator in Success

Hi! This is Dr. Michael DiMattina, Reproductive Physician at Dominion Fertility. You know, persistence pays off often. It is the single most important denominator in success of my patients over the many years that I have been practicing reproductive medicine.

This is a lady who sort of illustrates that to some point. This patient is a 41½-year-old female, who had never been pregnant, married for four years, had been trying to get pregnant all during that time. She came in to see me in June. She told me that she almost lost her uterus because she had so many fibroids. Two years ago, she had a laparotomy myomectomy, where they took out 20 fibroids from her uterus. Most doctors would have simply taken her uterus out, as a uterus that has that many fibroids is very difficult to reconstruct.

Nonetheless, she did not get pregnant for the past four years and now she was 41½ years of age. I said to her, “You know, we have to be aggressive in getting you pregnant ASAP.” We went ahead and put her into our stimulated IVF program. We got 17 eggs from her. Ten of these eggs fertilized. We were able to biopsy 6 of these embryos, which grew to blastocysts, and perform preimplantation genetic screening (PGS). Two of these embryos were genetically normal. This was a major breakthrough in reproductive medicine.

I highly recommend PGS to all of my patients, because it significantly increases the success rate, significantly decreases the miscarriage rate, and it assures the patient, with 99% accuracy, that their baby will be genetically normal. What’s not to like? We did put in one embryo in this lady, and despite the fact that she had a uterus with 20 fibroids removed two years ago, despite the fact she was 41½ years of age, she became pregnant in her very first embryo transfer, and she has one more genetically normal embryo frozen and stored and that has a great potential to produce another baby for her.

I’m really excited for her, and again, the single most common denominator, after practicing reproductive medicine for so many years, is persistence. Many people give up because they think that their case is the worst one or it is hopeless. There is always hope, one way or the other.

Dr. Michael DiMattina, Reproductive Physician, Dominion Fertility in the Washington, D.C. area.