As I mentioned in my last post, I was in attendance this week at the annual ASRM (the American Society for Reproductive Medicine) conference in Atlanta. It was a jam-packed 5 days and my head is full of lots of new information.
Today I’m going to start with some new guidelines ASRM released on the number of embryos that can be transferred during IVF (in vitro fertilization). These guidelines were developed to reduce the risk of multiple births. The guidelines were revised in two ways (and must be documented in the patient’s medical record):
- Regardless of the patient’s prognosis, only one more embryo than called for in the previous guidelines should be transferred
- Patients should be counseled on the risks of multiple births
For example, for women under 35 years of age, the recommendations are to transfer no more than two embryos during a single implantation procedure…this “in the absence of extraordinary circumstances.” Women ages 35 to 37 should receive no more than two to three embryos, women ages 38 to 40 should receive no more than four and that those women over the age of 40 should receive five or fewer embryos.
These guidelines should reduce the multiple birth rates.
There is so much more information from the ASRM conference that I will be sharing with you in upcoming posts so please stop back by to hear more.
One Comment
I have to say, every time I come to blog.attainfertility.com there is another remarkable post to read. One of my friends was telling me about this topic a couple weeks ago. I think I’ll send them the url here and see what they say.