By Lori DeBoer
The Mayo Clinic Scottsdale’s Center for Reproductive Medicine has put a new twist on an invitro fertilization procedure by thawing fertilized eggs and successfully bringing them to the blastocyst stage before transferring them to a patient’s uterus.
The new procedure—-developed by Dr. Anita P. Singh, fertility specialist and medical director for reproductive medicine at Mayo Scottsdale, and Dr. Diane G. Hammit, co-director of Mayo Scottsdale’s IVF program and director of the IVF and andrology laboratories—allows the transfer of fewer fertilized eggs with a higher likelihood of survival. The fertilized eggs are cultured for six days, which makes it easier to determine which ones have developed normally. Because fewer numbers of embryos are transferred compared to standard IVF procedures, it also reduces the risk of multiple births.
Successfully thawing embryos can be challenging, but Mayo Clinic has achieved a greater than 90 percent survival rate with thawing fertilized eggs and a 45 percent pregnancy rate, which is double the national average.
The costs associated with the use of frozen embryos is significantly less than going through a fresh cycle and reduces the need for additional egg harvesting procedures. Using this procedure also allows extra fertilized eggs to be cyropreserved for future use.
For more information about Mayo Clinic Scottsdale’s reproductive medicine program, call the Center for Reproductive Medicine at 480-614-6099.
Clinical tip: The blastocyst transfer procedures is appropriate for patients who are at high risk for multiple pregnancies or those who have a health issue that prevents bringing a multiple pregnancy to term.
This article originally appeared in the Mayo Clinic’s Physician’s Referral Newsletter, 2000.
