Local injury to the endometrium doubles the incidence of successful pregnancies in patients undergoing in vitro fertilization.

OBJECTIVE: Exploration of the possibility that local injury of the endometrium increases the incidence of implantation.

DESIGN: Prospective study.

SETTING: Clinical IVF unit.

PATIENT(S): A group of 134 patients, defined as good responders to hormonal stimulation, who failed to conceive during one or more cycles of IVF and embryo transfer (ET).

INTERVENTION(S): The IVF treatment and ET were preceded by repeated endometrial biopsies, in a randomly selected 45 of a total of 134 patients.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Outcome of IVF-ET treatments.

RESULT(S): Transfer of a similar number of embryos (3.4 +/- 1.0 and 3.1 +/- 0.9 in the experimental and control patients, respectively) resulted in rates of implantation (27.7% vs. 14.2%, P =.00011), clinical pregnancy (66.7% vs. 30.3%, P =.00009), and live births per ET (48.9% vs. 22.5%, P =.016) that were more than twofold higher in the experimental group as compared to controls.

CONCLUSION(S): These results suggest that IVF treatment that is preceded by endometrial biopsy doubles the chance for a take-home baby.