Benefits of Blastocyst Transfers – extended embryo culture significantly increases pregnancy rates

At IVF Hammersmith we have recently invested heavily in state of the art incubators and culture media. These improvements have significantly increased the chances of pregnancy for our patients regardless of age, treatment type or day of embryo transfer. With the improved culture environment comes the ability to offer blastocyst culture to an expanding number of patients so that now, almost 50% of our patients have embryos transferred at the blastocyst stage.

Blastocyst culture does not improve embryo quality, rather it enables our embryologists to choose the very best embryos for replacement and to transfer them at the optimum time to maximise your chance of pregnancy. This is especially so for the growing number of patients considering single embryo transfer who wish to maximise their chance of success without the risk of multiple pregnancy.

Blastocysts have been shown to have the highest implantation potential of all the stages of embryos that may be transferred back into the uterus and we have shown this to be true with our exceptionally high pregnancy rate of over 60% for blastocyst transfers in patients who are less than 37 years old.

If you would like to discuss any details regarding the process of blastocyst transfer, please call the Embryology Office on 0208 383 8185 IVF Unit, Hammersmith Hospital