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Think Ice, Ice … Baby.

If you are a couple considering in vitro fertilization (IVF), you may want to ask your fertility doctor about the possibility of freezing all of the embryos and transferring one later in a frozen embryo transfer (FET). Why? Spanish researchers have presented the first meta-analysis that indicates that the chance of a clinical pregnancy is around 30 percent higher when all embryos are frozen for later transfer than with fresh embryo transfer. And Australian researchers who analyzed more than 50,000 births between 2004 and 2008 say that a policy of single embryo transfer (SET) is associated with a reduction in perinatal mortality in infants born as a a result of IVF and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).

Both studies were presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) conference in Istanbul, Turkey, in July.

"It has become very routine for us in the last year to incorporate preimplantation genetic screening (PGS), and we do the embryo testing at the blastocyst stage for PGS and PGD procedures," says Brad Hurst, M.D., Director of Assisted Reproduction with the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Carolinas Medical Center's Women's Institute. "Typically we'll vitrify the embryos and come back later and do a frozen embryo transfer. We're using PGS also to help us do more single embryo transfer procedures."

by Leigh Ann Woodruff, June 28, 2012

It may get expensive, but there is good news for women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF). A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that women who undergo multiple fertility treatments may be nearly as likely to deliver a baby as women who conceive naturally. The average cost of an IVF cycle is around 12,400.

“Having the data to demonstrate that medically assisted conception can nearly match rates of natural conception is an important milestone,” says Dolores J. Lamb, PhD, President of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

The Michigan State University study of nearly 250,000 U.S. women sought to estimate cumulative success rates for IVF with continued treatment. Traditionally, assisted reproductive technology (ART) success is reported through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Assisted Reproductive Technology Report, and live birth rates are reported per cycle (per one course of treatment).

by Leigh Ann Woodruff, June 5, 2012

Being pregnant with twins is riskier than a singleton birth, no question. There are many more complications for both mother and babies. However, many couples undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) want to transfer more embryos in order to ensure they have a pregnancy and birth. But if you knew you were very likely to get pregnant with twins, would you still ask your fertility doctor to transfer more than one embryo?

A paper published in Fertility and Sterility reports the results of an advanced statistical method — which takes into account such factors as total motile sperm and Day 3 FSH levels — that can reliably predict an individual IVF patient's chance of conceiving multiples before the embryo transfer. The authors applied an advanced statistical prediction analysis to 2,413 double embryo transfer cycles at Boston IVF that resulted in live births from 2000 to 2009. They found that individual IVF patients have different risks of multiple birth probabilities, ranging from 11.8 percent to 54.8 percent. In more than half the patients, the rates were significantly different from probabilities based solely on age.

"Today, IVF patients and their physicians struggle with the choice of how many embryos to transfer," says Mylene Yao, M.D., one of the article's authorsand co-founder and CEO of Los Altos, Ca.-based Univfy Inc., developers of prognostic technology for fertility patients. "There is a general concern that transferring only one embryo can compromise the chance of pregnancy, and transferring even two embryos may raise the risks of multiple birth and associated obstetrical and neonatal complications. Personalized predictions of multiple birth risks enable patients and physicians to make safer and more informed embryo transfer decisions, while aiming to reduce incidence of unplanned multiple births."