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Carroll 3509 - June 9th, 2006 3:34 PM

I recently had a frozen embryo transfer of two blastocysts. Both were graded prior to feezing. One was a 4AB and the other was a 4BB. Can you explain these grades to me?

Also, my doctor showed me photos taken before the freezing of my embryos and then after they started to thaw. After thawing, they did not re-grade the embryos. Should this have been done?

My doctor told me that the embryos were filling out nicely and were viable for transfer. I could tell in the photos that the "inside part" of the blastocyst had not yet reached the outer "shell", but he reassured me that the embryos were continuing to expand. Is this normal? Shouldn't they be fully expanded prior to transfer? Thanks for the input.


Dr Smith - June 12th, 2006 1:05 PM

An explanation of blastocyst grading can be found at http://www.sharedjourney.com/a
rticles/Time.html

Froze
n
blastocyst stage embryos are not graded on the number/letter/letter scale post thaw. Thawed blastocyst stage embryos have 3 possible grades after thawing depending on the thaw-to-transfer period. The first grade is dead and requires no further explanation. The second grade is "collasped", which is expected during the first hour post-thaw and "re-expanding" which is expected 2+ hours after thawing. Yours were re-expanding, which is fine. Typically the transfer is performed a 1-2 hours after thawing, so full re-expansion is rarely observed. Your doc gave you all the available information about the "quality" of your embryos post-thaw. Best of luck.

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