Uterine sperm-egg transfer: a cost-effective alternative to IVF?

Direct transcervical transfer of spermatozoa and oocytes to the uterine cavity has been carried out in the past. This procedure could be a more appropriate approach than IVF for some anovulatory patients who require gonadotrophin stimulation, since the number of oocytes could be limited, thus reducing the occurrence of multiple gestations. However, most of the clinical pregnancy rates reported in the literature for gamete intrauterine transfer appear to be inferior to IVF pregnancy rates.

Vitrification demonstrates significant improvement versus slow freezing of human blastocysts.

Blastocyst culture has reduced the number of embryos transferred per cycle, whilst simultaneously creating new quandaries regarding supernumerary blastocyst cryopreservation. This retrospective study was undertaken to compare a slow freezing protocol to a vitrification protocol for cryopreservation of day 5 and day 6 human blastocysts. To demonstrate this, the survival, implantation rate and pregnancy rates were compared after thawing, assessment and embryo transfer of 86 consecutive day 5 and day 6 thawed blastocyst transfer cycles from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2003.