Have you been told that hCG levels have to double
every two days in order to have a healthy pregnancy?
Hi. I'm IVF and fertility expert Dr. Randy Morris
Stay tuned for just 10 seconds and I will tell you whether that is correct or not.
Here is the quick summary. You can still have
a healthy pregnancy and a viable live born baby
even if your hCG levels do not double every two days. You can also have hCG
levels that double or more than double every two days and
NOT have a viable pregnancy. Let me explain. hCG is the hormone
produced by some of the cells in an embryo.
After an embryo implants, the hCG is absorbed into the blood
and can be measured with a blood test. As the cells in the embryo grow and divide,
the hCG levels will increase. When you see an IVF specialist like me,
we will look at that hCG number and how it changes over time
in order to predict whether a pregnancy is viable or not.
For example, an hCG level that decreases over two days definitely indicates a
non-viable pregnancy. A doubling of hCG levels means a 100% increase
But, if the hCG level doesn't have to double in two days, what
is the slowest possible increase that still has a chance to be a viable pregnancy?
53 percent!! That's right! Your hCG level
only has to go up by 53% over two days
to indicate a viable pregnancy. Confused? Let's take an example. If your first hCG
level is 100, two days later you would want it to be at least 153
that is a 53% increase
That's not anywhere near to doubling
but 99% of viable pregnancies are going to have an increase that is at
least that. If we put it another way, only about 1%
of viable pregnancies have an hCG level that rises less than
53% over two days. In this video, I show you
that you can do your first hCG blood test much earlier after an
embryo transfer than you thought. If your second hCG level only increased
by 75% over two days, don't freak out! You are still in the
expected range for a viable pregnancy. If it only increases by say 40%
well, it's exceedingly unlikely that this will result in a baby.
Don't click away just yet. There are a few important points to understand.
If you used hCG for your trigger injection before the egg retrieval
and then did a fresh embryo transfer, there might still be hCG left in your
body when you go to do your pregnancy test
and this could throw off the numbers. Hopefully, your doctor only transferred
one embryo into your uterus, but if you transferred multiple embryos,
you could have a twin or a triplet pregnancy!!
This can really affect your hCG levels. It becomes much harder to determine a
viable pregnancy from a non-viable pregnancy in this case.
The examples i gave above work if you draw your hCG levels
two days apart like Monday and Wednesday. If there was a longer time between the
two blood draws, then use this chart to know the minimum
increase for a viable pregnancy.
Hi. I'm Dr Randy Morris. I give
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