The difficulties encountered with embryo transfer and the role of catheter choice in clinical pregnancy success rates in an IVF cycle

Objective: The aim of the study was to compare the clinical pregnancy rates of soft catheters and catheters with stylet in according to the difficulty levels of transfer.
Setting: Zeynep Kamil Women and Children's Hospital Reproductive endocrinology and Infertility division and Ferti-Jin ART center.
Materials and methods: The total number of 1158 embryo transfers performed are examined retrospectively. The embryo transfer performances are divided into three groups as easy, moderately-difficult and difficult. 827 transfers were in the easy group, 284 were in moderately-difficult group and 47 were in the difficult group.
Results: The pregnancy rates were % 41.4, % 36.2, and % 17, respectively. There were statistically significant difference between group 1 and group 3, p<0.05 and between group 2 and group 3, p<0.05. There were no statistically significant difference between group 1 and group 2, p>0.05.
Conclusions: In case of the failure of the embryo transfer by soft catheter by detected in mock transfer, it may be replaced by catheter with stylet to achieve the transfer. But the success of IVF is the highest in the easy-transferred and soft catheter used group. In moderately difficult group, it is possible to improve the clinical pregnancy rates by choosing catheter with stylet but not in difficult transfer group. Therefore examining the cervical canal, "trying mock transfer and deciding which catheter is to be used", before the transfer is very useful.