Saturday 22 October 2011

What happens after egg collection or what you need to know about embryos?

Once you have egg collection we, at SCI, do our best to make wonderful healthy robust embryos. So, as part of what we offer at SCI includes ICSI.

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is a procedure in which a single  (best looking sperm) is injected directly into an egg. The skill of the embryologist is paramount here and we are fortunate to have one of India's leading embryologist to do this.

What happens next : Embryo Culture

SCI follows the Hammersmith protocols in which embryos are cultured until having reached between an average of 2–8 cell stage between day two and three days after retrieval. Our embryologist will then grade the embryos (based on the number of cells, evenness of growth and degree of fragmentation),  that will assist Dr. Shivani, in deciding which embryos to transfer and how many to  freeze. Dr. Shivani, as your treating doctor will undertake the transfer to either you or your surrogate.

With SCI, we believe that IP's should have as much information about the process as we are able to provideso that IPs can :

1. Be informed
2. Have all the information available so that they can make informed, evidenced based decisions in moving forward.

Please see a sample embryology report given to all clients at SCI, (with client name removed). From this report you can see the number of egg collected, and the maturity (in this case 18 eggs, 17 mature - MII and one GV - germinal vesicle, not mature. It is important to know not just how many eggs were collected, but how many were viable.



From this report you can see the number of viable eggs that had ISCI and were fertilised ( again not all eggs fertilise) - in this case 17 - 2PN is 2 pro-nuceli - the DNA from dad and DNA from the donor.

On the left of the form, the four best embryos - all 8 cell of grade 1-1.5 were transferred by Dr. Shivani to the surrogate. If you would like to see Dr. Shivani undertaking an embryo transfer, please click here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hh2AugTW1Eo


On the right side of the form, you will see the number of embryo frozen and the grade (7 x grade 1 of 6-8 cells, and 3 x grade 2-3 of 6-8 cells.

Our embryologist doesn't freeze anything lower than a grade 3, as there is so little chance of the FET leading to a sucessful pregnancy and live birth. This is important information to have, especially if you are proceeding with FET in the future. Some less reputable agencies will often transfer lesser quality embryos with very little chance of success.

This was the first try for these clients, with wonderful results (and a twin pregnancy) , they are in the lucky 70% of clients with donor and surrogate who become pregnant on first try. Of course, there is always the unlucky 30%, but most SCI clients are pregnant on a subsequent transfer with 90% of clients becoming pregnant within two attempts.

If you believe we can help you, or if you have any questions, please feel free to email us,

2 comments:

  1. ooh i recognize that sheet!i got one, even though i didnt have these many eggs, we had success the first time and am so thrilled because i didnt think ivf could work the first time from what i have read and heard and in particular considering my advanced age. I am definitely going to try again!!!! Best wishes to this great clinic.

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  2. Thank you for all of this very interesting information - I'm finding it great to read and to learn about the fantastic things that can be done.

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