Extended Embryo Transfer Of Blastocyst Transfer In IVF

Hi Everyone!

I am Dr. Shweta Goswami, executive IVF consultant at Jaypee Hospital, Noida. Today I am going to speak about extended embryo transfer of blastocyst transfer in IVF. It is really for everyone? We need to understand the basic IVF concept. We give extra injections to a woman. We make an extra egg. We take them out and fertilize them with husband's sperm, create an embryo and put them back into the mother womb hoping to create a pregnancy. Now when we talk about blastocyst transfer, it is something that increases the success rate. Because the whole IVF depends upon the embryo selection. We keep the egg in the lab for 2-3 days or maximum for 5 days.

Now when we take them today 5 which is blastocyst transfer, it is the day when the embryo is actually attached to the mother womb. So, if we do a day 2 or day 3 transfer, we have a 4 cells or 8 cells embryo which may or may not develop into the blastocyst and when we take all of them to the blastocyst stage then we know that whether these embryos are actually good whether they have gone on further to develop into blastocyst stage or not. And that is how we decide which embryo is the best and we transfer them to get the pregnancy. If we routinely look at the day 2 or 3 transfer, we look at the 40-45% of success which would increase with blastocyst transfer 60-65% in woman who is young and who have good ovarian results.

Now the question is can we do it for everybody? The answer is no. The important thing in IVF is individualization. Do you as a woman definitely need a blastocyst transfer to increase the pregnancy rate, the answer may not be yes. So, day 5 may not work for everybody. Because we might left at the stage where we do not have enough embryo to transfer and we may be looking at the decrease in IVF success rate. Because what is the logic to grow embryo further on day 5 if we have only fewer embryos. We have to see whether it make sense to everybody. These are a just flashy term that we are using blastocyst transfer, we do laser hatching, but they don't really work for everybody.

So, if the patient has good 8-10 embryos and we need to decide which embryo to transfer and to freeze and she already has a failed IVF when day 2 or 3 didn't work then blastocyst definitely has a big role to play because it helps us to decide that which embryo is best. So, that is an important concept I wanted to convey that we should not get away from this flashy term. It is all up to you that what makes sense. What should determine and what should be your path of the IVF treatment. And not adding things to the basket because they look flashy. For any more details, you can contact me through Lybrate.