Everything about Ovarian Reserve totally explained
Ovarian reserve is a term that's used to determine the capacity of the
ovary to provides
eggs that are capable of
fertilization resulting in a healthy and successful
pregnancy. The determination of the ovarian reserve is important in the treatment of
infertility.
The ovary is generally thought of as an egg bank from which the woman draws during her reproductive life. While each month one egg is released by ovulation about one thousand additional eggs are lost by
atresia. Few if any oocytes are replenished during the reproductive years. Thus with advanced maternal age the number of eggs that can be successfully recruited for a possible pregnancy declines. Attempts have been made to assess the number of potential useful oocytes in a noninvasive way.
The most commonly used test to assess this ovarian reserve is the
day 3 FSH test. This blood test determines the level of
FSH on cycle day 3. Cycle day 3 is chosen because at this time the
estrogen level is expected to be low, a critical feature, as FSH levels are subject to a
negative feedback.
Thus any determination of FSH needs to include the corresponding
estradiol level to indicate that the FSH level was drawn, when the estrogen level was low. In a patient with infrequent menstruation, an FSH level and estrogen level could be measured at random and is valid if the estrogen level is low. Generally FSH levels are expected to be below 10 miu/ml in women with reproductive potential (levels of 10-15 miu/ml are considered borderline).
A
clomiphene challenge test is a variation on this approach.
Another approach is to examine the ovaries by
gynecologic ultrasonography and to determine their size as ovaries depleted of eggs tend to be smaller and to examine the number of antral follicles visible by sonography.
Women with poor ovarian reserve are unlikely to conceive with infertility therapy. Also see
poor ovarian reserve and
Follicle-stimulating hormone for treatment options.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ovarian Reserve'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://ovarian_reserve.totallyexplained.com">Ovarian reserve Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
