What's in a Number?

Part of me tried to tell myself I was being too pessimistic. My hcg wasn't 0, and it did double, even if it should have grown more at such a low level. That bodes well, right? So I went looking for research on the prognostic value of hcg. My conclusion: I wasn't being pessimistic enough.

Here's a table, in the IVF setting, looking at 14 and 16 days post retrieval. At 14 days, median value for viable intra-uterine pregnancy was 89, with a range of 68-121. Non-viable? Median of 95 with a range of 30-118. Mine? 64. Mine was below the lowest observed value in the viable pregnancy cohort.  Study.

They did find that ratio (e.g., doubling time) was more predictive than day 14 hCG, wich makes sense as it appears that for non-viable pregnancies, hcg didn't rise much beyond day 14 levels. With my past chemicals, hcg has usually peaked by 12 dpo, so it's interesting to see this showing a later peak.

Another study looked at 12dpo hcg (7 days post 5 day transfer). You can see from the table below that for my age group (B, 35-39 years), an hCG of 29 had a 39% chance of live birth, 64% chance of clinical pregnancy. Which means Nearly a 64% chance I'll get to see a heartbeat, but it'll die before birth. As an Asherman's patient with a TAC, that terrifies me. If I have to lose another one, please don't let it be in a way that causes more scarring.  Study.

So, what's in a number? Stress, that's what's in a number. :(