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Mamta Vernekar Dighe։ Should We Tell Patients When to Stop IVF?
Mamta Vernekar Dighe/LinkedIn
Sep 30, 2026, 16:12

Mamta Vernekar Dighe։ Should We Tell Patients When to Stop IVF?

Mamta Vernekar Dighe, Founder and Director at Xenith Advanced Fertility Centre, shared on LinkedIn:

“Should We Tell Patients When to Stop IVF – or Should We Be Better at Telling Them When Their Probability of Success Has Changed?

I get asked this question more than almost any other in my practice: ՛Doctor, how many more times should I try?՛

And honestly, I’ve stopped believing there’s a fixed number.

Early in my career, I think I, like many of us, worked with an unspoken cap in mind. Three cycles. Maybe four. After that, the conversation would shift toward ՛alternatives՛․ But over the years, I’ve realised that number was never really about the patient in front of me. It was a generalisation borrowed from averages, applied to someone whose ovarian reserve, embryo quality, uterine factors, and emotional resilience are entirely their own.

What I’ve learned to pay attention to instead is change. Not ՛how many cycles has she done,՛ but ՛has anything shifted since the last one?՛ A drop in embryo quality. A pattern of implantation failure with genetically normal embryos. A body that’s telling us something different than it was two cycles ago. That, to me, is the real signal to pause, not a number on a chart.

The harder part of this conversation isn’t clinical. It’s emotional.

Patients don’t want to hear ՛your chances are lower now.’ They want to hear that we’re still in this with them. So I’ve learned to reframe it, not as ՛stopping,՛  but as ՛changing direction.՛ Sometimes that means switching protocols.

Sometimes it means exploring donor eggs, or surrogacy, or simply taking a break before the next attempt. And sometimes, it genuinely means saying: continuing may cost more, physically, emotionally, financially, than it’s likely to give back. That’s not giving up on someone. That’s being honest with them.

I think our responsibility as fertility specialists isn’t to decide when a patient should stop. It’s to make sure they always know exactly where they stand, so that whatever they choose next, they’re choosing it with clear eyes, not blind hope or premature defeat.

Because in this field, false hope and false hopelessness can both do damage. Our job is to sit in the honest middle, and walk our patients through it with them.”

Other articles featuring Mamta Vernekar Dighe on Fertility News.

Embryo Quality Fertility Fertility News IVF Mamta Vernekar Dighe OBGYN ovarian reserve reproductive health Reproductive Medicine Surrogacy Uterine Factors Women’s Health
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