Procedure Predicts Embryos Most Likely to Result in Pregnancy

Emre Seli, M.D. To address the high rate of multiple births resulting from in-vitro-fertilization (IVF), researchers at Yale School of Medicine and McGill University have developed a procedure that estimates the reproductive potential of individual embryos, possibly leading to a decrease in multiple-infant births and a higher success rate in women undergoing IVF. Over 100,000 in-vitro fertilization procedures are performed each year in the United States. In 2002, 3.1 embryos on average were transferred in IVF cycles, but only 34.3 percent resulted in pregnancies. Of those successful pregnancies, 29 percent resulted in multiple births. These statistics remained unchanged within the last decade suggesting that an improvement is needed over the current methodology used for embryo evaluation.