Abstract:

Objective: Increased oocyte aneuploidy rates, along with the quantitative decrease of oocytes, are the main consequences of reproductive aging. We aimed to analyze assisted reproductive technique (ART) outcomes of women at extremely advanced age from a single tertiary IVF center. Material and Methods: This retrospective cohort study included women aged >42 years and underwent oocyte pickup between 2015 and 2020, in a tertiary IVF center. Reproductive outcomes of 178 women who underwent oocyte pickup and subsequent fresh and/or frozen-thawed autologous embryo transfer (ET) were analyzed. Results: A total of 261 oocyte pickup cycles from 178 women aged>42 years performed during the study period. The mean age of women was 44.5 ±1.4. Overall, 118 women (66.3%) underwent either autologous fresh and/or frozen embryo transfer cycles, and 60 women (33.7%) could not reach to embryo transfer. Clinical pregnancy and live birth rates were (5.0%, 1.1% per patient), (5.8%, 1.3% per embryo transfer) and (3.4%, 0.7% per cycle), respectively. Those patients who had live birth were 43 years old at oocyte retrieval, and their pregnancies were obtained from frozen-thawed embryo transfer. Conclusion: The pregnancy and live birth rates are extremely low for those patients at a very advanced age; however, there might be extreme cases with a successful result. Availability of supernumerary embryos for future frozen-thawed transfers might give a chance these patients to conceive. As with all infertile patients, an individualized approach should be taken into account in advanced age groups.

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