Factors influencing the pregnancy outcome in normotensive women undergoing frozen embryo transfer cycles

Background: Infertility is defined as a failure to conceive within one or more year of regular unprotected intercourse. Assisted Reproductive techniques have been developed rapidly over the past few decades helping couple who are unable to conceive naturally. The overall clinical pregnancy rate of ART is over 50%. Many factors can influence the success of a clinical pregnancy such as maternal age, ovarian reserve, duration of infertility, type of infertility, hormonal levels and endometrial receptivity. Maintaining a normal blood pressure level is generally considered positive for fertility outcomes, as elevated blood pressure can negatively impact a woman's ability to conceive, potentially leading to issues with ovulation, implantation and increased risk of miscarriage. However, there are still some unknown risk factors that could affect the pregnancy outcome of ART. Methods: This study included 80 normotensive women who underwent frozen embryo transfer cycles. Blood pressure was measured on all the women undergoing frozen embryo transfer. Female patient’s age, unique health identification, body mass index, type of infertility, blood pressure, endometrium thickness, number of embryos transferred, embryo grade and beta human chorionic gonadotropin were recorded. Results: Among 80 normotensive women who underwent frozen embryo transfer, all factors were non-significantly associated with the clinical pregnancy rate. Factors that resulted in higher clinical pregnancy rate includes higher blood pressure, primary infertility, PCOS, overweight, day 4 embryo transfer, endometrium thickness >9 mm and morula grade embryo transfer. This could be because of limited sample size and time restrictions. Conclusions: There is no significant association between blood pressure, type of infertility, polycystic ovarian syndrome, day of embryo transfer, embryo grade, body mass index and endometrium thickness with pregnancy rate in normotensive women undergoing frozen embryo transfer cycles. Further investigations with randomized trials are required to confirm the confounding nature of the factors analysed and their influence on pregnancy outcome in normotensive women undergoing frozen embryo transfer.