MEASUREMENT OF SERUM PROGESTERONE LEVELS ON THE DAY OF EMBRYO TRANSFER IS A USEFUL TOOL IN PREDICTION OF SUCCESSFUL PREGNANCY
TEODORA TIHOMIROVA1, DIMITAR PARVANOV1*, GEORGI STAMENOV1, TODOR CHAUSHEV1
1 Nadezhda, Women’s Health Hospital, 3 “Blaga vest” Street, Sofia, Bulgaria
*Corresponding author: e-mail: dimparvanov@abv.bg
Keywords: Progesterone, predictor, pregnancy, single frozen embryo transfer
Abstract: Progesterone plays a key role in the establishment of endometrial receptivity and embryo implantation. However, knowledge on the prognostic significance of serum progesterone on the day of embryo transfer in natural cycle is still scarce.
A single center prospective study of single frozen embryo transfer (SFET) was performed during the period October 2015 – November 2016 with 252 women undergoing ICSI cycles. Progesterone concentrations were measured on the day of SFET and pregnancy test (bhCG) was done 14 days later. Receiver Operator Characteristic curve (ROC) was used to evaluate the predictive value of serum progesterone for discriminating women with successful implantation and to delineate the optimal cut-off value.
Successful implantation registered by bhCG test occurred in 44.8% of the patients. There were no significant differences in age, FSH, BMI and quality of the transferred embryos between pregnant and non-pregnant women. Mean serum progesterone levels were significantly lower in women with negative bhCG-test compared with those with positive pregnancy test (20.08 ng/ml ± 9.44 vs. 27.9 ng/ml ± 10.52 respectively (p=0.034)). At cut-off value of 14.40 ng/ml, progesterone had 88% sensitivity and 75% specificity. The area under the ROC curve for progesterone was 0.67 (95% Confidence Interval, 0.52-0.89).
In conclusion, these findings indicate that serum progesterone, measured on the day of embryo transfer could be used for prediction of successful implantation.