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Hum. Reprod. Advance Access originally published online on February 22, 2006
Human Reproduction 2006 21(6):1337-1344; doi:10.1093/humrep/del026
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

DEBATE—CONTINUED

The relative myth of elective single embryo transfer

Norbert Gleicher1,2,3,5 and David Barad1,2,4

1 Center for Human Reproduction, New York, NY, 2 Foundation for Reproductive Medicine, 3 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Yale University School of Medicine, Chicago, IL and 4 Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine and Department of Obstetrics and Obstetrics and Gynecology & Women’s Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA

5 To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Center for Human Reproduction, 21 East 69th Street, New York, NY 10021, USA. E-mail: ngleicher{at}thechr.com

The option of single embryo transfer (SET) has recently dominated the pages of this and other medical journals. Opinions, in regards to the utility of such an approach, appear to differ between Europe and the US. While US guidelines promote a more individualized approach, European opinions, at times, even advocate mandated practice patterns. The European approach, however, fails to recognize the rather significant differences in supportive arguments between the historical switch from multiple embryo transfers to 2-embryo transfers and the current discussion, favouring a switch from 2-embryo transfer to elective (e)-SET. In the former, a significant risk of (at times, high-order) multiple pregnancies was reduced without loss of pregnancy potential. In the latter, a comparably relatively low twinning risk is reduced at the expense of declining pregnancy rates, a need for more treatment cycles, a potential delay in treatment success and, potentially, higher treatment costs. These consequences of e-SET, together with the preference of some infertility patients to actually conceive twins, raise serious questions about the wide utilization of e-SET, as has been propagated by many authorities. According to US guidelines, e-SET, therefore, appears to represent an appropriate transfer option for only a small minority of IVF patients. Argument in favour of indiscriminate SET appears unrealistic and should be reconsidered.

Key words: embryo transfer/IVF/IVF risks/multiple births


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