Have you ever heard about follicular studies? Whether it is yes or no, you’re here to know that a follicular scan can confirm your pregnancy. It is a vital part of reproductive health evaluation as it involves the use of ultrasound scans for tracking the golden window. But, it can’t confirm pregnancy.
So, other than this, what are all the things that a follicular study tells us about? Let’s know the importance of follicular study and its purpose, importance, and limitations to understand its role in reproductive health.
Follicular study an overview
The follicular study uses ultrasound scans to monitor the follicles inside the ovary and the ovulation. Your healthcare provider can identify the number of follicles and monitor the growth and development of the follicles, helping in planning infertility treatments like IUI and IVF.
Studying about the follicle development helps in various causes. Yes, that’s why a follicular scan is very crucial in fertility treatments.
Who needs follicular scans?
Infertility is the one key reason for follicular scans as they can track the condition of eggs and the fertile window. If you’re above 35 years of age, then this will help them to identify issues related to ovulation.
Other than these two important conditions, women with PCOD and PCOS can undergo this treatment to identify the condition of egg maturation and cysts.
How many times can you do the follicular study?
Women can undergo follicular study multiple times, which can be around 8 to 10 times within a single cycle (in one menstrual cycle). It is a series of vaginal ultrasound scans that take 5 to 10 minutes and women need to undergo the scans as per their healthcare provider’s advice.
This helps ensure optimal timing for natural conception or assisted reproductive techniques, minimizing the chances of missed opportunities during the fertile window.
Importance of follicular study
Follicular monitoring is very helpful in identifying several conditions, which include:
- Infertility
- Patient with polycystic ovary syndrome
- Premature ovarian failure
- Evaluate ovulation-related abnormalities and monitor follicle growth.
Other than identifying these conditions, women or couples can use the follicular study in both normal and artificial reproductive technologies. Do you know how?
In natural pregnancy
Some couples suffer due to ovulation issues and failure of sexual activity even after trying for a year or more than six months. The main reason for this situation is the improper timing of intercourse and ovulation.
It happens because sperm can survive only for 5 days in the fallopian tubes, meanwhile, a released egg stays from 12 to 24 hours. If the sperm and egg don’t meet at the proper timing, then fertilization won’t take place even if a healthy couple is practising regular sexual activity frequently.
Your healthcare provider will monitor the follicles present in the ovary and confirm whether the egg is ready to be released or not. Thus, having intercourse around the fertile window gives effective optimal pregnancy results.
In vitro fertilization
When it comes to in vitro fertilization and intrauterine insemination, couples and fertility experts should be even more careful to witness successful pregnancy results in the first cycle. In the case of Assisted Reproductive Techniques ARTs, you need to undergo a follicular scan at different stages of the treatment.
The follicular monitoring can take place in these situations:
- Evaluating the ovulation-related abnormalities.
- Monitoring follicular size after ovulation-inducing drugs such as Clomiphene Citrate.
- For effective planning of ovulation-triggering agents like HCG injection.
- Guiding the procedures like IUI, egg retrieval, and IVF.
- Monitoring the effectiveness of infertility drugs.
- To identify the response of the fertility drugs to be aware of the side effects like OHSS.
When it is intrauterine insemination, the process should be perfectly timed, so knowing the apt time of ovulation is crucial to improve the chances of optimal success.
In IVF, knowing the right time is very important to retrieve eggs and embryo transfer. In vitro fertilization helps in determining the exact timing for egg retrieval by identifying the matured eggs that are not yet released.
Can follicular monitoring confirm pregnancy?
So, coming to the main topic of the article, follicle monitoring can’t identify or confirm a woman is pregnant.
With follicular study, your healthcare provider can only identify the ovulation and response of egg reserve inside a female’s body.
Here are some valid points, indicating why you can’t confirm pregnancy through follicular study.
Limitations of follicular monitoring while confirming pregnancy
- Follicular monitoring is predictive, which only indicates the fertility window.
- It is specially designed for preconception insights and not for confirming pregnancies.
- This test can identify HCG and pregnancy hormone levels, still, it can’t identify the pregnancy.
If you want to confirm pregnancy you need to be aware of these essential methods.
What is the right way to confirm pregnancy?
Confirming pregnancy through blood tests is very crucial as they can provide you with accurate results. Measuring accurate levels of HCG hormones is very important to identify accurate pregnancy results. Other than this, women can choose a home pregnancy kit for identifying the pregnancy results.
When you’re choosing home pregnancy test kits, you need to follow the instructions behind the package. Whatever the results are, you must consult the healthcare provider to identify the exact pregnancy results. Sometimes, HCG levels in your urine can be less and the result might be negative while checking in the home pregnancy test kits.
Final words
In conclusion, the follicular study is a monitoring process that helps in identifying the egg reserve and tracking ovulation and is not a test for confirming pregnancy. However, follicular scanning can effectively help to increase the possibilities of conception with the Assisted Reproductive Technologies ARTs, especially IVF procedures.
In addition, women don’t need to undergo this treatment unless and until your fertility expert asks them to. So, this is not a mandatory condition and is only a recommendation to know whether the egg is released or not.
Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs)
According to the sources, only 10% is the success rate of the follicular studies, but it helps in both natural fertilization and assisted reproductive technologies.
No, usually follicular ultrasound scans don’t have any direct physical side effects. Couples may feel stressed while undergoing this scan, other than that, follicular ultrasound scans don’t have any side effects.
Typically, 15 to 20 mins are enough to undergo this scan, but, it takes a lot of time to prepare for the scans. Cooperation with the healthcare provider minimizes the time and makes it even shorter, which is within 10 minutes, the follicle scan could be completed.
Follicular monitoring is really a safe and painless procedure without any side effects. But, women could experience a bit of discomfort when inserting the transducer into the vagina. Typically, follicular monitoring is a painless process.
Women can consider they have a follicular count between 6 to 10, which is the optimal reserve. The size of a good follicle is 18 to 24 mm, an ideal endometrial thickness lies from 7 to 14 mm and optimal is from 8 to 10mm.
