Why do doctors continue transferring more than one embryo ? The danger of IVF twin pregnancies

It's well known that the risk of prematurity is higher in a multiple pregnancy - and this is true for twin pregnancies as well . The problem with premature births is that many of these babies end up having lifelong health problems because of their prematurity. They spend weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit ( NICU) – which can be very expensive , and very stressful for the parents as well . And many of them end up with medical problems which plague them all their life, such as ROP – retinopathy of prematurity.

This is why all good clinics all over the world will do only single embryo transfers ( SET) .

While it's true that transferring more embryos at one time does bump up the chances of getting pregnant in that cycle , the risk is definitely not worth it .

It makes much more sense to transfer only a single blast at a time, and freeze the extra blastocysts, so that they can be transferred in the next cycle, in case the fresh cycle fails.

This way, you are actually increasing your chances of getting pregnant by putting one embryo at a time, rather than bunging them all in at one shot .

This problem becomes exacerbated when cowboy doctors transfer 3 embryos, because if all 3 implant, then you send up with a triplet pregnancy . The doctor is then forced to do a selective fetal reduction , which often results in a mid- trimester miscarriage , because of the dead fetal tissue left in the uterus. This means that even though the doctor is happy the patient got pregnant, and counts the pregnancy as a success, for the poor patient , her happiness is very short-lived.

The take-home baby rate for that particular patient is zero , because they don't have any baby to take home ! And even if you don’t miscarry, you still have a high risk of having a premature birth – which means you will have babies to take home , but they may be mentally handicapped because of their prematurity – and that does not help you either !

It's well known that the risk of prematurity is higher in a multiple pregnancy - and this is true for twin pregnancies as well . The problem with premature births is that many of these babies end up having lifelong health problems because of their prematurity. They spend weeks in the Neonatal Intensi nit ve Care Unit ( NICU) – which can be very expensive , and very stressful for the parents as well . And many of them end up with medical problems which plague them all their life, such as ROP – retinopathy of prematurity.

I think the real reason these IVF clinics transfer more than one embryo is because they know their embryo implantation rates aren't good and to compensate for this , they transfer more than one embryo. 

This means that it's the doctor who gets all the rewards , and the patient who takes all the risks ! You need to push back if a doctor's tell you to transfer more than one embryo . This is definitely not in your best interests, and is not in line with global best practices either .