Endometrial Biopsy & Implantation

Last week's Ha'aretz - a leading Israeli newspaper - had a fascinating article about endometrial
biopsy as a method for improving embryo implantation with IVF. While researching connexin43 protein in women going through fertility treatments, Prof. Nava Dekel of the Weizmann Institute, an expert on women's fertility, discovered that after having had an endometrial biopsy (using an instrument called a pipelle), a remarkable number of women (11 out of 12) had become pregnant and given birth to healthy babies! The article goes on to detail several personal experiences (with lots of happy endings :-))

Rehovot's Kaplan hospital has been offering the treatment since 2002 . In their experience of about 1300 cycles, it significantly increased IVF pregnancy rates - 48% pregnancies in the group treated with pipelle & IVF vs. 31% pregnancies in the group who did just IVF.

It's still not known exactly why the pipelle treatment helps, but it does offer hope toward improving implantation rates with IVF. This may help solve the question of how many embryos to transfer - if transferring just one will yield high pregnancy rates.