Natural cycle IVF/IVM may be more desirable for poor responder patients after failure of stimulated cycles

Abstract

To describe pregnancies and live births resulted from natural cycle IVF combined with in-vitro maturation (natural-cycle IVF/IVM) for three poor responder women after failure of stimulated cycles. For case 1 and 2, the mature oocytes from aspirated follicles were inseminated by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) immediately; immature oocytes were matured in vitro, and the embryos from mature and immature oocytes transferred on day3 after oocyte retrieval. For case 3, 3 consecutive natural cycles were performed, in which the matured oocytes from in vivo or in vitro were vitrified in the first and second cycle, and warmed on the retrieval day of the third fresh cycle. Then the embryos resulted from vitrified-warmed and fresh oocytes were transferred. A total of 15 oocytes were obtained from the 7 retrieval cycles for the three cases. The case 1 was successfully pregnant at her first natural cycle, and case 2 was pregnant after two consecutive cycles. The two cases had successfully delivered and case 3 was in her ongoing pregnancy at the time of submission. These results demonstrate that natural-cycle IVF/IVM might be a reasonable and efficient treatment alternative for poor responder patients when stimulated cycle has failed.