Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Sir,
The recent article by Kahraman and colleagues [1] reports the results of a study concerning the utility of preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) for couples of poor prognosis who had only 1 blastocyst available. Their study demonstrated that PGT-A had efficacy to distinguish viable and non-viable embryos with various benefits.
It is generally accepted that in vitro fertilisation (IVF) is available to help people with fertility problems to have a baby. It is also recognised that the psychological burden of repeated implantation failure and spontaneous miscarriage of a much wanted pregnancy can be severe.
Albeit in a crude analysis, it seems that given 100 women with 1 embryo for transfer or testing, 10 womenFootnote 1 benefit by avoiding a pregnancy loss; however, 19 fewer womenFootnote 2 achieve the primary objective of having a baby. This is in the context of only transferring embryos with a uniform euploid test result, and where the women in the not tested group had a younger age demographic (35.3 vs. 38.6 years on average) and therefore likely represents an underestimate of the pregnancy loss benefit and an overestimate of the live birth detriment of PGT-A.
Quantifying the likely benefits and also the potential detriment to the goal of achieving a baby may help to better inform couples who might be considering having their embryo(s) tested. There is a continuing need for well-conducted experimental studies to obtain and present the probabilities of the various harms and benefits that may result before routinely offering PGT-A protocols as an adjunct to IVF.
Data availability
Not applicable.
Code availability
Not applicable.
Notes
[(131/938) − (40/1126)] × 100 = 10
[(278/938) – (115/1126)] × 100 = 19
Reference
Kahraman S, Duzguner INB, Sahin Y, Irez T. What to advise to patients with only one good quality blastocyst, PGT-A or not? Outcomes of 2064 cycles. J Assist Reprod Genet. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10815-022-02617-7.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
The author is responsible for the content and writing of the article.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics approval
Not applicable.
Consent to participate
Not applicable.
Consent for publication
Not applicable.
Conflict of interest
The author declares no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Scriven, P.N. The probability of detriment as well as benefit needs to be presented for PGT-A. J Assist Reprod Genet 39, 2571 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10815-022-02642-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10815-022-02642-6