Risk awareness of multiple pregnancies and preference on potential treatment outcomes in Asian infertile women

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Multiple pregnancy is an adverse outcome in assisted reproductive technology (ART), which prompted Western countries to limit the number of embryos transferred. It is uncertain whether Asian infertile women are aware of such risks and whether their treatment decisions are influenced by such awareness, or lack thereof. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 246 Chinese female patients who had failed IVF treatment at a local hospital fertility clinic (response rate: 51.6%). They estimated risks associated with multiple pregnancies and ranked preference on potential treatment outcomes. FINDINGS: Respondents mean age was 37.2 (SD = 3.4), and had 3.2 years of ART treatments. Comparing against local data, they achieved 52% accuracy in risk estimation: around 29% and 18% overestimating pregnancy rate of single embryo (SET) and multiple embryo transfer (SET). While 60% desired for one child, 73% preferred having triplets or quadruplets to negative pregnancy outcome. Their risk awareness are not different than those who preferred negative outcome to multiple pregnancy. IMPLICATIONS: Despite awareness of possible risks, most infertile women preferred multiple pregnancies over negative pregnancy outcome. This suggests information gap may not be the reason for their treatment preference.