Couples with male balanced-translocation carriers may experience recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL). Although the expectant management of RPL has developed over many years, genetic counseling for RPL couples with male balanced-translocation carriers remains challenging. Here, we describe the expectant management of 2 male carriers of balanced translocations.
A 32-year-old and a 28-year-old man presented at the clinic with diagnoses of infertility following spontaneous abortions by their wives.
Both patients had normal semen diagnosed by routine semen analysis and underwent cytogenetic diagnoses.
Following genetic counseling and informed consent, both couples voluntarily chose expectant management with natural conception.
One couple experienced 2 natural pregnancies, the first of which ended in spontaneous abortion and the second produced a phenotypically normal infant. The other couple's first pregnancy resulted in a fetus with a balanced translocation confirmed by amniocentesis and cytogenetic analysis.
Expectant management with natural conception may be an alternative to genetic counseling in male balanced-translocation carriers with RPL, especially those who are reluctant to undergo preimplantation diagnosis.
Medicine. 2020 Jun 26 [Epub]
Haitao Fan, Xiuyan Wang, Xiao Yang, Hongshu Zheng, Shuqiang Feng