Reciprocal translocations in couples with spontaneous abortions.

A sample of 87 couples addressed to cyto-genetic analysis after the occurrence of one or more spontaneous abortions was studied. Reciprocal translocations were found in three couples. In reviewing the literature, the data were broken down and reassembled in order to estimate the translocation frequency in homogeneous samples. The conclusions of this re-examination is that for those couples with a history of frequent spontaneous abortions, a cytogenetic investigation is advisable, even if there have been no cases of still-borns or malformed children.