Global Rates Of Assisted Reproduction Climb
Internationally, the use of assisted reproduction technology, or ART, has become an increasingly accepted means of helping people to surmount infertility problems. However, a new report shows that as the frequency of such procedures increases, so too do certain complications associated with them, one of the most common of which is multiple births.
"There was no real surprise in the trends, which are consistent with previous trends," said Dr. Jacques de Mouzon of Bicetre Hospital in Paris, France.
ART is a general term applied to a variety of fertility-enhancing techniques such as in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) “” a laboratory procedure in which a single sperm cell is directly inserted into an egg.
In a recent edition of the journal Human Reproduction, Dr. de Mouzon and colleagues published the results of the Eighth World Report on ART, in which they examined statistics on ART procedures from countries around the world for the year 2002.
The report indicated that in the two year period since the previous report was published, the number of people who sought ART treatment globally increased by 25 percent, while the number of babies born as a result of ART procedures rose from 219,000 in 2000 to 246,000 in 2002.
During the same time period, delivery rates from in vitro fertilization rose by almost 19 percent and about 20 percent from ICSI. Curiously, delivery rates associated with the technique known as frozen embryo transfer (FET) also rose by 12 percent despite an overall decrease in the average number of embryos transferred.
First introduced in the 1980s, the FET procedure takes embryos that have been frozen for a period of time and replaces them in the uterus of the would-be mother after they have been thawed. FET is a relatively non-invasive procedure and can usually be performed successfully on women who are experiencing either natural or controlled menstrual cycles.
Researchers explained that in countries like South Korea, United Arab Emirates and India, the percentage of transfers with four or more embryos remained relatively high, leading to increased instances of multiple pregnancies which in turn raised the percentage of babies who died before or soon after birth, as well as those born prematurely.
"The main public health problem still concerns the high rate of multiple pregnancies," de Mouzon said. "It has already decreased, because of a decrease in the number of transferred embryos, but is still high in many countries."
Dr. de Mouzon added that specialists are beginning to raise questions regarding the reason behind the trend towards more ICSI usage, "which, if not justified by male infertility or fertilization failure in previous ART cycles, results in higher costs and, eventually, higher risks, with no gain."
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