An 18-month survey of infertility treatment by in vitro fertilization, gamete and zygote intrafallopian transfer, and replacement of frozen-thawed embryos.

An 18-month survey of infertility treatment by in vitro fertilization (IVF) and related procedures at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel is described. During this period, 1326 treatment cycles were started in patients with long-standing infertility and 1135 oocyte retrievals were performed in 771 different patients. IVF and embryo transfer (ET) after laparoscopic (N = 793) or ultrasonically guided (N = 342) ovum pickup, gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT; N = 284), or zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT; N = 15) combined with IVF as well as the replacement of cryopreserved embryos yielded an overall pregnancy rate of 21.8% per started cycle. Echographic and laparoscopic oocyte retrieval gave similar results except for a higher fertilization rate after echographic-guided retrieval. For in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer an overall pregnancy rate of 26% per transfer was obtained. For GIFT and ZIFT the pregnancy rates were, respectively, 27.8 and 46.7% per replacement. For each procedure one-third of the pregnancies aborted. After the replacement of frozen and thawed embryos, during a natural cycle, a significantly lower fetal loss was observed.