Fertility Treatments and PCOS

Dre. Karen Desrosiers

If you want to have a pregnancy, then we get to on a different type of medication. But before any treatments for fertility, they will do at least a semen analysis to make sure there’s no other issues creating the infertility. If any other conditions explain the fertility problem, then usually you need to be transferred to a fertility clinic, and IVF is usually the treatment they would recommend. If the only reason is anovulation, then we can give you a pill by mouth that will increase the ovulation. What it does is decrease the estrogen in your system and stimulate the hormones that make your ovaries to ovulate, being more active. When you go to a fertility clinic, they usually offer you treatments with hormones that really, really are similar to what you produce yourself to stimulate the ovaries. They have more risk and side effects, but the risk is mostly to hyper stimulate the ovaries or to have a multiple pregnancy. There is different dosage, different protocols, but it’s something that will be discussed with the doctor at the fertility clinic. We can add sometimes, some medication that helps to decrease insulin and increase the chance of ovulation like metformin or inositol. They both can be used, inositol will have less side effects, but inositol can help to increase ovulations, the quality of ovulations, decrease the androgens, and all the signs like hirsutism and acne, even decrease the lipids, and decrease the dose of hormones that they have to give you, which decreases the risk of complications like multiple pregnancy or hyperstimulation of the ovaries.

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