Abstract
Purpose: The role of assisted hatching in good-prognosis IVF patients was evaluated in a prospective, randomized, controlled pilot study, which was followed by a retrospective observational series.
Methods: After assisted hatching was proved successful in a mouse embryo study, 20 good-prognosis IVF patients were randomly assigned to either assisted hatching (13) or no assisted hatching (7; the controls). Following this series, 27 good-prognosis IVF patients were retrospectively evaluated to determine the outcome with assisted hatching.
Results: In the prospective study, clinical pregnancies resulted from 3 (23%) of 13 patients in the hatching group, compared to 3 (43%) of 7 in the control group. Implantation rates were similar: 9.6% in the hatching group and 10.7% in the controls. In the retrospective series, the 11.1% implantation rate with assisted hatching was significantly less than the 42.9% implantation rate seen with traditional IVF.
Conclusions: Implantation and pregnancy rates are high in young women undergoing traditional IVF. Assisted hatching is not beneficial in these patients.
KEY WORDS: in vitro fertilization, micromanipulation, assisted hatching, implantation
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (247.6 KB).
Footnotes
Presented in part at the 50th Annual Clinical Meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, Seattle, Washington, October 7–12, 1995.
References
- 1.Alikani M, Cohen J, Liccardi FL, Talansky BE. Micromanipulation. In: Asch RH, Studd JWW, editors. In Annual Progress in Reproductive Medicine, 1993. Boston: Parthenon; 1993. pp. 1–18. [Google Scholar]
- 2.Kruger TF, Acosta AA, Simmons KF, Swanson RJ, Matta JF, Oehninger S. Predictive value of abnormal sperm morphology in in vitro fertilization. Fertil Steril. 1988;49:112–117. doi: 10.1016/s0015-0282(16)59660-5. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 3.Veeck LL. Preembryo grading: In Atlas of the Human Oocyte and Early Conceptus. Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins; 1991. pp. 121–149. [Google Scholar]
- 4.Tucker MJ. Ingargiola PE, Massey JB, Morton PC, Weimer KE, Wilker SR, Wright G: Assisted hatching with or without bovine oviductal epithelial cell co-culture for poor prognosis in vitro fertilization patients. Hum Reprod. 1994;9:1528–1531. doi: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.humrep.a138743. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]