Pacific Fertility Center Celebrates Healthy Baby Month

Pacific Fertility Center (PFC) has designated the month of May as Healthy Baby Month, highlighting its commitment to building families, one healthy baby at a time. During Healthy Baby Month, PFC is educating the community about the risks of multiple gestations and showing how its cutting-edge fertility treatment reduces these risks while simultaneously achieving high pregnancy rates.

In the past, multiple gestations such as twins, triplets, and even quadruplets were commonplace with in vitro fertilization (IVF). That's because it was standard practice to transfer multiple embryos to maximize the chance of pregnancy. But with multiple gestations comes multiple risks, such as the increased risk of preterm labor, low birth weight, and birth defects.

According to the March of Dimes and National Institutes of Health, 60 percent of twins and 90 percent of triplets are born prematurely. More than half of twins and virtually all other multiples are born with low birth weight. This increases the child's risk of lifelong disability, such as cerebral palsy and vision or hearing loss.

Mothers carrying multiples are also at increased risk. They may develop problems such as gestational diabetes or preeclampsia, which is marked by high blood pressure and high levels of protein in the urine. If undiagnosed, preeclampsia can lead to eclampsia, which puts both baby and mother at serious risk and, in rare cases, can lead to serious complications.

By contrast, a singleton pregnancy predicts a safer pregnancy, with a lower risk of complications for both mother and child. Single pregnancies with IVF are increasingly possible, thanks to a combination of advanced technologies that Pacific Fertility Center has helped develop over the past 5 years.

Comprehensive chromosome screening, video imaging of early embryo development, elective single embryo transfer (eSET), and a specialized form of cryopreservation (vitrification) work together to enable transfer of one embryo at a time with very high pregnancy rates.

In brief, here's how this works:

• Pacific Fertility Center's unique stimulation and laboratory protocols allow development of embryos to the 5^th or 6^th day of development, the blastocyst.
• Time-lapse video imaging identifies early the best embryos out of the group of embryos by monitoring cell division every 5 minutes, 24 hours a day.
• An embryologist removes a few cells from the blastocyst.
• Chromosomes are counted, identifying embryos with a normal set of chromosomes (euploidy). This technique is called comprehensive chromosome screening (CCS).
• Embryos are vitrified and stored while awaiting test results.
• A euploid embryo, one with a normal count of chromosomes, is transferred back to the mother, often in a natural cycle, using eSET when appropriate.

In 2012, 51 embryo transfers with CCS-screened embryos were initiated in women <=40 years of age. This resulted in a clinical pregnancy rate of 74.5 percent per transfer.

This means a transfer resulted in a clinical pregnancy 3 out of 4 times. For most women, these high pregnancy rates were achieved with a single embryo transferred. These are high pregnancy rates, with low risk of multiple gestation. We are reaching Pacific Fertility Center’s goal of building families, one healthy baby at a time.

About Pacific Fertility Center

Pacific Fertility Center is an international destination for male and female fertility treatment and care. It provides an extensive array of fertility treatment options ranging from intrauterine insemination (IUI), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) to cutting-edge technology such as fertility preservation, vitrification and genetic testing of embryos. For more information: www.pacificfertilitycenter.com.

Media Contact
Renee H. Scudder, MS
415-249-3662
scudder@pacificfertility.com

Pacific Fertility Center
55 Francisco Street, Suite 500
San Francisco, CA 94133

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