Tetsuya Isobe
Background: In 2007, Japan restricted the number of embryos that could be transferred during in-vitro fertilization.
Objectives: Researchers have sought to improve the pregnancy rate per embryo transfer cycle. Subjects: Subjects were 35 of patients who underwent single thawed blastocyst transfer at this Hospital from January 2016 to March 2017 and who underwent 3 or more acupuncture sessions to improve their pregnancy rate. Design: 50 transfer cycles of subjects were compared to 315 cycles of all other patients without acupuncture who underwent single blastocyst transfer during the same period, and the pregnancy rate per embryo transfer cycle of the 2 groups was compared retrospectively.
Setting: Acupuncture was performed by the current author, and embryos were transferred using the same technique. The date of the start of acupuncture was left to the patient’s discretion; in principle, patients underwent 1 session per week. Six sessions constituted 1 round of acupuncture. After 1 round of acupuncture, patients were encouraged to undergo an additional 1-2 sessions during the embryo transfer cycle. Acupuncture was performed in which needles were inserted slightly by only tapping into place at 31 fixed acupoints.
Results: Over 50 transfer cycles, subjects had a biochemical pregnancy rate per transfer cycle of 62.0% and a clinical pregnancy rate of 52.0%. A biochemical pregnancy rate per transfer cycle increased 1.35 times and a clinical pregnancy rate increased 1.42 times by current acupuncture.
Conclusion: Results suggested that slight insertion of acupuncture needles at fixed points markedly improved the pregnancy rate of in-vitro fertilization.
