The demise of preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) in Hungary and its effect on patient care

Preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) is a suitable technique to identify euploid embryos, which have the highest potential to implant, thus increase the chance of a healthy live birth. The main indications of PGT-A are advanced maternal age, repeated implantation failure, repeated miscarriages and severe male infertility. Several studies have already proven that testing embryos for genetic abnormalities in the above cases results in higher implantation rate and reduced number of pregnancy loss. In spite of these - due to a legislative change in Hungary in 2015 - PGT-A was reclassified as an experimental procedure and its use became banned throughout the country. For this reason, after 4 years of successful practice, Hungarian patients were not able to participate in IVF procedure combined with PGT-A anymore. In this retrospective analysis, efficacy of PGT-A-based embryo selection was evaluated and was compared to the conventional morphology-based selection (MBS) in patients with advanced maternal age, between 2013 and 2017 at our private fertility clinic. PGT-A was performed with array comparative genomic hybridization. We found that implantation rate was significantly higher (43.62% vs. 27.88%; p = 0.0208) and miscarriage rate was significantly lower (17.07% vs. 37.93%; p = 0.0492) in the PGT-A group compared to the MBS group from 2013 to 2015. These outcomes were achieved with a significantly lower number of transferred embryos in the PGT-A group (1.25 vs. 1.58; p = 0.0003). In 2016-2017, the number of transferred embryos were significantly reduced in the MBS group as well (1.14 vs. 1.58; p < 0.0001). However, outcomes of the IVF treatments did not change significantly compared to the previous two years (2013-2015). Our results imply that PGT-A-based embryo selection is more efficient than morphology-based selection in patients with advanced maternal age. Therefore, prohibition of the use of PGT-A had significant consequences on the efficiency and safety of IVF treatment in the country.