Reply: Missing studies: obstetric and perinatal outcomes

Sir, We read with great interest the review by Pandey et al. (2012) about obstetric and perinatal outcomes in singleton pregnancies resulting from IVF/ICSI showing that in them perinatal outcomes were somewhat worse than those of control pregnancies. However, the review omitted our study which is one of the largest cohort studies (n 1⁄4 4559 including 2930 singletons) on health of IVF/ICSI children, published in two papers (Klemetti et al., 2005, 2006). We compared IVF/ICSI children to children born after spontaneous conception adjusting for mother’s age, living area, marital status, parity and socioeconomic position. The Shilpi et al. review confirms our findings that IVF/ICSI singletons have significantly increased risks for preterm birth, low birthweight and congenital anomalies. In our study adjusted OR (95% CI) for preterm birth (,37 weeks of gestation) was 1.72 (1.51–1.96), 1.60 (1.37–1.87) for low birthweight (,2500 g), 2.06 (1.56–2.76) for very preterm (,32), 2.17 (1.64–2.88) for very low birthweight (,1500 g) and for congenital anomalies 1.30 (1.05–1.61), respectively. In addition, we found that IVF/ICSI singletons had increased risks for having special care [1.36 (1.21–1.53)], respiratory treatment [1.76 (1.34–2.31)] and hospitalization 7 or more days after the birth [1.43 (1.26–1.61)].