Impact of active female smoking on controlled ovarian stimulation in intracytoplasmic sperm insemination cycles.

AIM: To examine the impact of smoking among females on controlled ovarian stimulation (COS), at intra-cytoplasmatic sperm injection (ICSI) outcome. METHODS: A prospective analysis of outcomes of 876 women (fresh, non donor cycles) of which 559 (63.8%) were non-smokers, 317 (36.2%) were smokers, underwent standard COS/ICSI treatment. RESULTS: Among smokers, the average time of COS, expressed in days, was significantly longer compared with non-smokers (10.5±2.10 vs. 10±1.90 p less than 0, 05). There were no registered significant differences in the number of retrieved oocytes, (10.4±6.8 vs10.3±6.9), mature oocytes (8.6±5.8 vs. 8.4±5.9), in the group of non-smokers versus smokers. However, smoking and age have a significant impact of the number of high-quality embryos, i.e. older smokers had a lower number of high-quality transferred embryos (non-smokers ≥ 35 years : smokers ≥ 35 years; 1.9±1.1 vs. 1.6±1). On multiple logistic regression analysis, factor that had a significantly negative impact of clinical pregnancy was maternal age. CONCLUSION: Smoking among patients entering the COS and ICSI fertilization process had insignificant negative impact on the final outcome of the process resulting in reduced pregnancy rate. The chance for the pregnancy declines with age, but smoking did not significantly influence the outcome.