Development of children born after IVF and ICSI

Follow-up studies of pregnancies as well as children born following assisted reproductive technologies are of utmost interest to provide a reliable basis for patient counselling. Especially in recent years, studies of high quality have been performed and published, showing some slight but significantly increased risk for pregnancy complications as well as major malformation rate following IVF and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). The health status and subsequent development of children born seems to be comparable to those after spontaneous conception up to the age of 5 years. The study of Bonduelle and co-workers, published in this issue of Reproductive Biomedicine Online, contributes further to the follow-up information available for children born after ICSI. However, there are some limitations for all these follow-up studies, which have to be taken into account, when interpreting results. These are discussed in this commentary.