Patient's question:
My wife retrieved 18 eggs, and today we checked the embryos, which resulted in 12 being formed. However, only 2 of them are embryos, while the others failed to develop into blastocysts due to excessive fragmentation. I'm wondering if embryos with a lot of fragmentation can still be successful?Doctor's answer:
Fragmentation generation is a sign of apoptosis. When the embryo is subjected to internal causes or external environmental stress, it produces DNA repair mechanisms to expel harmful cellular components, leading to the generation of fragments. Therefore, embryos with more fragmentation may have poorer growth potential, making it an important indicator for assessing embryo quality. Generally, Day 3 embryos classified as Grade 1 and Grade 2 are quite good. Grade 3 embryos are slightly inferior but still usable. Grade 4 embryos are rarely transferred or frozen. Embryo quality is also related to the ages of the couple. For instance, a Grade 1, 8-cell embryo from a younger woman has a very low coefficient of variation in chromosomal mutations, whereas an older woman's embryo has a significantly higher coefficient of variation.