What happens if implantation is not successful

If you have menstrual irregularities or if you have been struggling to conceive, talk to your doctor. Although there is no test to determine when embryos implant or why late implantation occurs, other tests may uncover the reasons behind impaired fertility. Get diet and wellness tips delivered to your inbox.

A review of mechanisms of implantation. Dev Reprod. Time of implantation of the conceptus and loss of pregnancy. N Engl J Med. The association of maternal factors with delayed implantation and the initial rise of urinary human chorionic gonadotrophin. Human Reprod. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellFamily. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page.

These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. If you have had several miscarriages, it is unlikely that late implantation is the sole cause. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Family uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles.

Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Related Articles. A pregnancy starts with fertilization, when a woman's egg joins with a man's sperm. Fertilization usually takes place in a fallopian tube that links an ovary to the uterus. If the fertilized egg successfully travels down the fallopian tube and implants in the uterus, an embryo starts growing.

All the eggs for a woman's lifetime are stored in her ovaries. Women do not keep producing eggs. This is different from men, who continuously make more sperm. About once a month, an egg is released from one of a woman's two ovaries. This is called ovulation. The egg then enters the nearby fallopian tube that leads to the uterus. If a woman and a man have unprotected sexual intercourse, sperm that is ejaculated from the man's penis may reach the egg in the fallopian tube.

If one of the sperm cells penetrates the egg, the egg is fertilized and begins developing. The egg takes several days to travel down the fallopian tube into the uterus. Despite our ever-improving approaches to care, embryonic issues still create inefficiency in all of our treatments. Over the last two decades, various approaches to try and address this problem have been developed.

All of these approaches have utilized in vitro fertilization with the embryos being tested. For many patients, the testing allows us to accurately address the problem of embryos having abnormal chromosome numbers.

How can this be? Today, we are going to explore why chromosomally normal embryos may not implant and how we try to address the problems when we can.

Failure to achieve a successful pregnancy with euploid embryos can be generally grouped into three major areas: embryonic, uterine, and systemic. The development of an early embryo is a complex and highly synchronized series of events to prepare it for attaching to and invading the lining of the uterus. The process starts at fertilization with single cell called a zygote, which develops over 5 days into a cell hollow ball, called a blastocyst.

It is a blastocyst that will attach to and implant in the lining of the uterus. Our 46 chromosomes contain about 25, genes that have to function properly to have the embryo develop successfully.

I think of it like a symphony of the genes being turned on and off at specific times. If the timing of this is off, just like an orchestra, things will go badly. Basic science studies suggest that energy function metabolism of the embryo is also a likely cause of failure, but this too cannot be practically measured in the clinical lab.

Basic science studies and our clinical experience suggest that early embryo development can be altered by our clinical and laboratory environment. It is clear that the type of follicular stimulation in an IVF cycle will impact the oocyte and embryo. The correct use of supporting medications LH or low dose-hCG, growth hormone, androgens may be beneficial to development of the growing follicle and egg for some individuals.

However, incorrect use of these medications can be detrimental. The type of trigger shot used to prepare for egg retrieval hCG or GnRH agonist may have an impact on egg quality also, but who may benefit from which drug and to what degree there is an advantage remain unclear.

As you can imagine, the laboratory environment plays a huge role in how the embryos will perform. Culture media has evolved tremendously over the last 30 years, starting from simple media adequate for most cells to the variety of high quality embryo-specific, commercially made media that we currently use. There are several high quality culture media available that work well however, constant quality testing is essential to make sure a chosen media performs optimally.

The incubators that the embryos grow in and their function are clearly a major factor. Most high quality practices are using the small bench top incubators which do a better job of maintaining the chemical environment and temperature stability for the embryos to grow in.

However, these high-tech devices must be constantly monitored, as subtle changes can impact embryo performance. Simple things like how often the embryos are evaluated, under what conditions, and the time it takes to do so can tremendously impact embryo performance.

The trend is clearly towards evaluating the embryos less frequently. It should not go without saying that technical competence of the people in the laboratory is essential for good outcomes. However, those of us who have done inspections have seen a wide array of skill levels.

In ICSI intracytoplasmic sperm injection- injecting the sperm in to the egg for example: was the procedure done at the correct time? What kind of sperm was selected? Was the sperm inserted in the correct place in the egg?

How long was the oocyte egg out of the incubator?