Comparison of early pregnancy and neonatal outcomes after frozen and fresh embryo transfer in ART cycles.

Purpose: frozen embryo transfer (FET) has no clear negative impact on neonatal outcome compared with fresh embryo transfer (ET) and appears to result in similar or even better neonatal outcome. The objective of this study was to compare early pregnancy outcome and neonatal health of children born after FET and fresh ET.

Methods: in this study early pregnancy and neonatal outcomes after FET (n = 200) and fresh ET (n = 500) were compared.

Results: for early pregnancy, biochemical pregnancy was comparable between FET and fresh ET groups. Spontaneous abortion was significantly higher in FET (14.5%) than fresh ET group (9%). Neonatal outcome was comparable between both groups except for lower live birth rate in FET (55%) versus fresh ET group (66%).

Conclusion: FET has similar neonatal outcome in terms of prematurity, low birth weight, stillbirth, neonatal death and major malformation compared with fresh ET.