This is one of a series of news items from abstracts of studies presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine as complied by Dr. David Meldrum, former partner and Scientific Director of Reproductive Partners. We appreciate the enormous amount of work it takes to compile and comment on these abstracts.
Recent trenda in IVF include both all-freeze cycles to avoind an overstimulated endometrium from the fertility drugs and doing Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS) with a delayed transfer to improve success rates and increase the use of elective single embryo transfer (eSET).
As reported in one study at ASRM, women over age 35 were randomized between fresh transfer or frozen (FET) after PGS. The implantation rate increased significantly from 41 to 70%. Birth rate increased from 54 to 75% in spite of transfer of 1.6 instead of 2.2 blasts.
These excellent results are consistent with a minimal impact of trophectoderm embryo biopsy. For women over 35 this has the potential to provide eSET for the large majority of IVF good responders as evidenced by Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) levels averaging 2.5 in the study.