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Single Embryo Transfer: Significance of the Embryo Transfer Technique

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Screening the Single Euploid Embryo

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Abstract

Single embryo transfer (SET) has been hailed as perhaps the only foolproof solution to avoid the incidence of multiple pregnancy, a significant complication of assisted reproductive technology (ART). While SET has remained successful in its motive of avoiding multiple pregnancy, the challenge of ensuring a positive clinical pregnancy and eventually a live birth following SET still looms. As the choice that determines that the ‘best amongst the rest’ of embryos implant in a multiple embryo transfer is eliminated in SET, the pressure to ensure that ‘only the best’ single embryo is transferred and yields a high probability of pregnancy mounts in SET. Several factors, such as patient selection, embryo quality, uterine receptivity and, most importantly, the embryo transfer (ET) technique itself, play a role in ensuring a high possibility of success following SET. While these factors are also common to the success of ET involving the transfer of multiple embryos, the significance of the SET technique would seem higher owing to the absence of embryo selection for implantation in the uterine cavity, the additional efforts to ensure the high quality of the single embryo transferred, and the emotional, psychological and financial involvement of the patient. A carefully planned, ultrasound-guided atraumatic ET technique that avoids difficult transfers and factors predictive of a poor outcome would go a long way to optimise clinical outcomes with SET.

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  1. Rotunda IVF–The Center for Human Reproduction, 36 Turner Road, 101 Bandra (W), Mumbai, 400 050, India

    Gautam N. Allahbadia & Rubina Merchant

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  1. Gautam N. Allahbadia
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  2. Rubina Merchant
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Correspondence to Gautam N. Allahbadia .

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  1. Center for Advanced Genetics, Reproductive Research Section, Carlsbad, California, USA

    E Scott Sills

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Allahbadia, G.N., Merchant, R. (2015). Single Embryo Transfer: Significance of the Embryo Transfer Technique. In: Sills, E. (eds) Screening the Single Euploid Embryo. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16892-0_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16892-0_18

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