Patient's question:
Thirteen eggs were retrieved the day before yesterday. Today, I received a call from the hospital saying they were successfully prepared into 10 embryos. The day after tomorrow, two fresh embryos will be transferred, and four will be frozen. Additionally, four other embryos, including three Grade 4 embryos and one Grade 3 embryo, will be cultured into blastocysts. The hospital mentioned that those four embryos have poor quality, which is why they need to be cultured into blastocysts. What does "culturing blastocysts" mean?Doctor's answer:
Culturing the blastocyst refers to the continued in vitro culture of the third-day embryo to become a blastocyst on the fifth to sixth day. After the egg and sperm form a zygote, it undergoes continuous division, forming a 5 to 10-cell embryo on the third day, which is commonly referred to as the third-day embryo. Continued in vitro culture allows the cells to continue dividing, forming a cell cluster of more than 100 cells on the fifth to sixth day, which is the blastocyst. The advantage of the blastocyst is that it has better developmental potential and is more in line with human physiological conditions, resulting in higher implantation rates. The success rate of blastocyst transfer is 20% higher than that of third-day embryo pregnancy, while also reducing the incidence of ectopic pregnancy and the rate of multiple pregnancies.