STANFORD, Calif., Oct. 2 (UPI) -- An in vitro fertilization technique to avoid multiple births appears to be effective for women older than age 35, California researchers report.
Senior author Dr. Amin Milki, of the Stanford University School of Medicine, said that more than half of the women in the study became pregnant after undergoing a single blastocyst transfer, which transferred just one embryo into the womb.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine currently recommends doctors transfer two or more embryos into women older than 35, to maximize a patient's chance of becoming pregnant, however, this can result in twins or higher-order multiples.
After reviewing the data from 45 patients ranging in age from 35 to 43 that had a single blastocyst transfer at Stanford University Medical Center -- with a mean age of 37.3, Milki and colleagues found that 28 patients conceived and 23 had pregnancies that went beyond the first trimester, said the study published online in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
Milki called this an "excellent pregnancy rate," since the national success rate of IVF procedures for women in this age group is around 25 percent, but the women in the study all had good-quality embryos and had a relatively good chance of becoming pregnant.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20071002-14010100-bc-us-ivfbirths.xml
