I have to weigh in on this one, as I am a LOT closer to this story than anyone here. Kaiser Bellflower is just down the 405 from here, and while I wasn’t part of the delivery, our residents rotate through there, and one of our residents was. In addition, I’m completing a fellowship for high-risk obstetrics and will be caring for women like her.
The doctor who placed these six embryos (and it was six, not eight, at least two of the embryos split resulting in identical twins) should have his license pulled IMO. Absolutely unconscionable placing that many embryos in a 33 year old woman. tha problem we have here is that reproductive endocrinology is one of the last bastions of medicine where you can make BIG BUCKS, as it is mainly an all-cash deal. If you pay, you can play. Almost no regulation at all. In my opinion, if a patient was not willing to consider a selective reduction to twins there is no way I would implant more than 3 embryos. But clearly that question was never asked.
What really drives me nuts over these higher order multiples that get all the press is that they never discuss how many of these deliver before ANY of the babies are viable, which is a much larger number than the ones that get to take babies home.
I have more I would like to say on this, but I just got paged for a C-section. Will be back later.
