Lawyer: Octuplets’ mom implanted with 12 embryos

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES

Nadya Suleman’s fertility doctor implanted her with a dozen embryos in the pregnancy that gave her octuplets, a state attorney said Monday, conflicting with Suleman’s assertions that only six embryos were implanted and two of them split.

Dr. Michael Kamrava’s action endangered the mother of 14 and violated national standards of care, Deputy Attorney General Judith Alvarado said at the Medical Board of California’s hearing to consider revoking or suspending the Beverly Hills physician’s license.

Kamrava “knew that a 12-embryo transfer was unsafe,” Alvarado said in her opening statement. National guidelines issued by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine specify no more than two embryos are to be used in in vitro treatments for a healthy woman under 35.

The board has set aside two weeks for the hearing to determine whether Kamrava was negligent.

Dr. Victor Y. Fujimoto, an expert witness for the medical board and director of the University of California San Francisco In Vitro Fertilization Program, testified Monday that 12 embryos or blastocysts’ being transferred into a uterus is unheard of. He reviewed hundreds of pages of medical records from Suleman and other patients before giving testimony.

“I cannot imagine any colleague of mine transferring that many embryos,” said Fujimoto, adding he’d never transferred that many himself.

High-order multiple births can result in long-term developmental delays, cerebral palsy and various life-threatening ailments.

There are no hard-and-fast rules, but fertility specialists have criticized Kamrava’s methods, saying he endangered Suleman’s health and the long-term health of the babies. Suleman’s babies, born nine weeks premature in January 2009, are the world’s longest-surviving set of octuplets.

Suleman, a 33-year-old divorced single mother, has said Kamrava implanted her with six embryos for each of her six pregnancies.

Fujimoto said Suleman, identified as N.S. by the medical board, actually requested 12 blastocysts to be transferred into her, but it’s the physician’s job to make a decision not to transfer embryos, even when a patient insists.

Much of Monday’s testimony went beyond fertility-medicine claims, as Kamrava is accused of failing to refer Suleman for a mental-health evaluation before giving her repeated fertility treatments.

Fujimoto said Kamrava made an “extreme departure from standard of care” by failing to refer Suleman to a mental-health evaluation after she said she wanted twins on the heels of delivering her second child. Her request, Fujimoto said, came in October 2002, after Suleman had borne two children through Kamrava’s treatments who were only 17 months and 4 months old.