Effects of different blastocyst culture strategies on patients with repeated implantation failure

Objective To compare the effects of different blastocyst culture strategies on patients with repeated implantation failure (RIF), and to provide better measures for RIF patients to get clinical pregnancy opportunities. Methods Retrospective analysis was performed on the results of the fresh blastocyst culture and blastocyst culture after frozen-thawed cleavage stage embryo in 249 RIF patients from August 2011 to June 2016 in Reproductive Medical Centre of Northern Jiangsu People’s Hospital. Patients were divided into two group according to blastocyst culture strategies, fresh blastcyst culture group (166 cycles) and frozen-thawed cleavage stage embryo culture group (93 cycles). Results There was no significant difference in blastocysts formation rate, transplantable blastocysts formation rate or high quality blastocysts formation rate between fresh blastocyst culture group and frozen-thawed cleavage stage embryo culture group (P>0.05). Clinical pregnancy rate and embryo implantation rate of frozen-thawed cleavage stage embryo culture group were higher than those of fresh blastocyst culture (P>0.05), but there was no significant difference in clinical pregnancy rate between the two groups (χ2=1.617, P>0.05); three was significant difference in embryo implantion rate between the two groups (χ2=9.525, P 0.05). Conclusions Fresh blastocyst culture has similar efficacy to frozen-thawed cleavage stage embryo strategy. They can culture embryo of same quality, and has similar pregnancy outcome after transplantation. Key words: Repeated implantation failure; Blastocyst culture; Blastocyst transplantation