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The United Kingdom's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has launched a consultation to examine four options to reduce multiple births after in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
Each year in the UK 126 babies born after IVF die as a consequence of multiple birth, and the risk of death in mothers, although low, is doubled in women who are expecting twins. Currently 24% of women who have had IVF have a multiple birth.
The HFEA wants to encourage the use of single embryo transfers in each treatment cycle in patients who are most likely to conceive (such as those who are relatively young and who have not had many failed IVF attempts). At the moment many of these women receive two embryos in a treatment...