Journal of the European Society for Gynaecological Endoscopy

esge_logo

Editorial


Published online: Jul 29 2010

It is a great honour for our young journal to have found Dr. Howard Jones Jr, the American IVF pioneer, and Dr. Brian Allan, a gynaecologist active in the insuring consulting business, prepared to write a short survey of how Single Embryo Transfer is slowly finding a way into the American reproductive practice. Dr. Jones, who will turn 100 years at the end of this year, thereby demonstrates his never ending endeavour to strive towards truly high quality care for patients. Many minds are ripe for judicious SET in the United Stated, but the health insurance system, or the relative lack thereof, has hampered the implementation of SET. It will be interesting to see whether the changes that have been backed by the present US government will have any impact on the still high incidence of multiple pregnancies in the US. However, if some kind of financial agreement can be obtained between the larger health insurance companies and practitioners and their representatives, it is not impossible that in a near future, a drastic reduction of multiples will be possible. Other countries, e.g. Turkey, which also recently voted a very – perhaps too – wide application of SET, have tackled the problem in their own way.

Two original articles describe work carried out in Flanders and one PhD summary by Dr. Wyns from the French speaking Catholic University of Louvain on male fertility preservation are presented. We also welcome for the first time an analysis of trends in infertility and childlessness from Mumbai, India, and we sincerely hope that this will be the first of a series to come. During my last visit to India, attending the XIth annual meeting of the ISAR (Indian Society for Artificial Reproduction), I was impressed by the firm determination of our Indian colleagues to catch up with and surpass western levels of competition and ambition in the field of reproductive sciences. We extend the warmest welcome to strong contributions from a country with endless possibilities for clinical and basic research.

Finally, the colleagues from the Flemish University of Louvain have collected now for a considerable period of time data on cancer in pregnancy and they present in this issue their findings on haematological cancers in pregnancy which poses specific problems of diagnosis and treatment. In this way, the present issue of our journal offers you facts, views, and vision on some important and very different aspects of our working field.

Jan GERRIS
Associate Editor