Whether poor responses have worse perinatal prognosis (retrospective analysis of assisted reproductive technologies cycle)

Abstract

The prevalence of poor ovarian response is 5.6–35.1% in women undergoing controlled ovarian stimulation in ART cycles. The frequency of delivery of poor responders after ART is on average from 9.9% to 23.8%. In clinical practice, the vast majority of poor responders are older women, which may have an effect on perinatal outcomes, respectively. Although numerous studies have reported that the fertility rate after ART in women of this age group is quite low, data on perinatal outcomes in this group of women is limited. Therefore, the aim of our study was to retrospectively analyze and compare perinatal outcomes in women with poor ovarian response to stimulation compared to control group (normal response to stimulation) in assisted reproductive technology programs. 278 women with infertility with a reduced response to stimulation (poor responders), who were the main group, were screened. Indications for the inclusion of women in the main group were the presence of at least two of the following criteria for a poor ovarian response according to the 2011 Bologna criteria and 93 infertile patients with a normal ovarian response to stimulation of the control group. Subsequently, retrospective study of perinatal effects such as preterm labor, low birth weight, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia in 50 women with infertility with reduced response to stimulation and 37 controls with normal response to stimulation in which pregnancy was diagnosed was performed. Variational-statistical processing of the results of the study was performed using the program “Statistica 6.0”. The study demonstrated a significantly lower pregnancy rate in poor responders compared with women from the control group — 50 (17.9%) vs. 37 (39.8%), respectively. Perinatal outcome were similar only to the statistically significant difference in the percentage of spontaneous abortions before 12 weeks of gestation — 9 (18%) vs. 4 (10.8%), respectively, in groups with no significant difference in the preterm labor frequency — 10 (20.8%) and 6 (18.1%) of the low weight of the child at birth — 9 (18.7%) versus 5 (15.1%), respectively, in poor responders patients and in women with normal ovarian response. The frequency of complications such as gestational diabetes and high blood pressure were not significantly different in both clinical groups — 3 (6.25%) versus 2 (6.1%) and 5 (10.4%) versus 3 (9.1%) respectively. Thus, he poor responders in ART programs have a significantly lower pregnancy rate and a higher incidence of pregnancy loss up to 12 weeks compared with women who had a normal response to ovarian stimulation without a significant difference in the rates of various complications of pregnancy and perinatal outcomes. Wide randomized multicentric trials are needed to find out the causal relationships with regard to the effect on pregnancy, miscarriage, perinatal effects of controlled ovarian stimulation regimens, embryotransfers in fresh or cryo cycles etc.