Multifetal pregnancy reduction

Abstract

Multifetal pregnancy reduction (MFPR) has become a mainstay of infertility therapy as its development has allowed physicians to become more aggressive in treating patients resistant to more conservative therapies. Over the course of the past decade, MFPR has become practised in a limited number of tertiary specialty centres, which have improved its performance and very substantially lowered its risks. The majority of physicians performing MFPR employ a transabdominal needle injection of potassium chloride into the fetal thorax. Risks for pregnancy losses of patients starting with triplets and/or quadruplets reduced to twins have improved over the past decade and are not substantially different from those in patients whose pregnancy began as twins. There have been no substantiated risks of coagulopathies or damage to surviving fetuses.