Post-warming survival rates and clinical outcomes of human cleavage stage embryos vitrified/warmed using CryoTouch and Cryotop methods

Abstract

Abstract Background Vitrification has become the method of choice for cryopreservation of human embryos and gametes. There are multiple commercial media, containing different combinations and concentrations of cryoprotectants, available for vitrification and warming procedures. The aim of this retrospective study was to compare post-warming survival rate and clinical outcomes of cleavage stage embryos vitrified/warmed using two different commercial methods (CryoTouch and Cryotop) during intracytoplasmic sperm injection/frozen embryo transfer (ICSI/FET) cycles. This retrospective study evaluated a total of 173 FET cycles performed on 446 warmed cleavage stage embryos between January 2018 and December 2020. Post-warming embryo survival rate and clinical outcomes including clinical pregnancy, implantation, and live birth rates were calculated. Results The results showed no significant differences between two groups in terms of post-warming survival rate (p value = 0.5020), clinical pregnancy rate (p value = 0.7411), implantation rate (p value = 0.4694), and live birth rate (p value = 0.5737). Conclusions Collectively, high successful rates were observed in outcomes of vitrified/warmed cleavage stage embryos using both CryoTouch and Cryotop commercial methods.

Keywords

• Cryopreservation
• Embryo vitrification
• Survival rate
• Clinical outcome