On July 25, 1978, twenty-two years ago, the first baby, Louise K. Brown, was born from a Reproductive Technology/IVF. The field of Reproductive Medicine is continually changing, as evidenced by the utilization of Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), the growing of embryos to Blastocyst, and now the implementation of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD).

PGD is a process whereby a single blastomere from an 8-cell embryo (three days post fertilization) is removed, fixed, and subjected to a number of DNA probes. We can now determine if an embryo is a male or a female, or has an extra chromosome, i.e. 13, 16, 18, 21, 22. The results can be obtained within 24 hours which allows the laboratory another 24 hours to grow the normal embryos to Blastocyst (five days post fertilization) for embryo transfer.

Early studies have shown that women with advanced maternal age > 39 years old, and women who have failed > two IVF cycles, have as many as 50% of their embryos with aneuploidy (having an abnormal number of chromosomes), when doing PGD. This can certainly be an explanation for the low rates of success in IVF outcomes in these patients. In a third group of patients, those with recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL), it is known that in 50% of this group the loss is due to a genetic abnormality.

Clearly, PGD has improved the outcome in these groups of patients. Coastal Fertility Medical Center is pleased to announce that we are now offering PGD to our patients. It is our hope that we can provide valuable information to our patients to allow them to make appropriate choices.

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