The truth is that the quality of the eggs is one of the key factors in seeking pregnancy. At this point, the woman's age is key. The older the woman, the lower the quality of her ovarian reserve.
Knowing the quality of your eggs before undergoing fertility treatment is very complicated and there are no tests for it. What we can do is approximate the number of eggs we can expect. There are several tests, although the main ones are the measurement of the antimullerian hormone or the antral follicle count in an ultrasound scan. With these two tests, a gynecologist can give you an idea of your ovarian reserve.
Certain pathologies can affect this quality, regardless of the woman's age. However, the passage of time causes the cells in our body to age, including the eggs. Therefore, a woman under 30 years of age will have a much greater chance of becoming pregnant than a woman of 37. Furthermore, it is from the age of 40 onwards that the deterioration of the eggs makes it much more difficult to achieve a full-term pregnancy.
Bearing this in mind, we can understand the importance of knowing the quality of our eggs when we are trying to have a child. However, this quality can only be determined once a woman has tried to become pregnant naturally, or by undergoing assisted reproduction treatment without obtaining the expected results.
The best way to check the quality of the eggs is through an in vitro fertilization cycle. This cycle allows direct observation of the response of the ovaries to hormonal stimulation. After the ovarian stimulation, the gynecologist will count the follicles that have a good size and are developed. After the extraction, the biologist observes the oocytes under the microscope and will analyze the quality according to their shape and the characteristics of their cytoplasm.
Several studies have shown that morphological alterations in the oocytes are associated with a worse pregnancy rate.
