Ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy that happens outside the uterus. The most common location for ectopic pregnancy is outside the uterus, in the tube and this is one of the most dreaded complications during any form of fertility treatment and even in ladies who conceive naturally, we always want to make sure that pregnancies are not ectopic but ectopic pregnancies are in a little bit more common in a couple or in ladies seeking fertility treatment. Whenever a lady has an ectopic pregnancy that will put her at a higher risk of developing or having an ectopic pregnancy in the future. There are two theories why ectopic pregnancies happen. In general, naturally speaking the egg and the sperm – naturally, they meet inside the tube, they form an embryo inside the tube and the tube will have some celia that will push the embryo down inside the uterus to allow the embryo to implant inside the uterus. There’s a theory that says that abnormally bad tubes are not pipes, so there’s a theory saying that the tube that is open does not mean that the tube is functioning properly and that’s why the embryo might sit in the tube and the tube might not be pushing it normally inside the uterus. Unfortunately, when it happens once that means most probably there’s an intrinsic problem inside the tube and that’s why the risk of it happening again is quite high. Sometimes, that you might be damaged by an ectopic pregnancy and that’s why it decreases the likelihood of ladies conceiving naturally on their own in the future because logically speaking we have two tubes, the ladies are ovulating most of the time but not necessarily alternating from right left ovary, so if we have one blocked tube that will lower the chances of success even further. Besides an ectopic pregnancy might sometimes be associated with infections that might cause the ectopic pregnancy, for instance chlamydia is one of the risk factors that might be associated. Sometimes ladies who had operations before like inside the tummy, like an infected appendix as a child, might block the tube and this might be associated with ectopic pregnancy. The other theory, sometimes people say that abnormal embryos implant in abnormal places where the tube is perfectly healthy but the embryo is abnormal so that embryo decides to implant in an abnormal place. So we know that ectopic pregnancy once it happens the risk of it happening again is quite more common. It is also described in medical literature that there are some cases that there are some families that are at a higher risk of having ectopic pregnancies, yet there’s no specific gene. I have to say this is the vast minority of cases, so most of the time ectopic pregnancy happens because of a problem in the tube rather than being a genetic cause, although it has been reported in the medical literature that some cases have a genetic predisposition.
Everything depends on the treatment the patient had for an ectopic pregnancy.
If the patient had a salpingostomy which means that the tube was not removed and the only thing that was removed was the pregnancy but the tube is still there, the chance of getting another pregnancy ectopic is very high and it’s really double of the average.
If the patient had a salpingectomy so she had the tube removed in that case the chances of getting pregnant of course are half of a half so it’s a 50%when compared to the average population but the chance getting another ectopic pregnancy is the same as in the average population
