Written by Dr. Peter Hollands.

When Louise Brown was born over 30 years ago, she resulted from one beautiful 8 cell embryo. In the subsequent years, the number of embryos transferred has varied with the general underlying thought that more embryos transferred lead to better overall results. Most of the early workers transferred 3 embryos, which then went up to 4 or even 5, as this seemed to give the greatest chance of pregnancy, especially in women over 40. As time went by, it became clear that multiple pregnancies were becoming routine in assisted conception and the complications, risks, and social and financial implications of these multiple pregnancies became matters of hot debate. As a result, the current trend, in patients under 35 with good prognosis, is to recommend elective single embryo transfer in fresh assisted conception cycles and much greater emphasis on embryo freezing followed by single
frozen embryo transfer.

This article was published in the June 2009 issue of the IVF NEWS.Direct! journal.

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