Guide to Assisted Hatching

Assisted hatching is a procedure performed on embryos produced during IVF treatment on couples with decreased fertility.  80% of couples will conceive within a year of trying and 90% within two years if they don’t use contraception and have regular intercourse. There are many factors affecting fertility: one such factor is the age of the partners; a woman’s fertility decreases with increasing age. About 30% of women aged over 35 years will experience some sort of fertility problems. Other factors could be hormonal, having medical problems such as PCOS and reduced sperm quality or quantity.  Unfortunately for many couples their infertility may be ‘unexplained’.  The definition of  infertility is not being able to conceive despite regular, unprotected intercourse for 2 or more years.

There are some factors in a couple’s history which may indicate having tests before 2 years.  In the male partner this would be having had un-descended testicles as a child or having suffered from mumps.  In the female partner being over 35 years old, having a history of abnormal menstrual periods, having had surgery in the pelvic or abdominal regions or having a known condition such as PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome).

Treatment for infertility

There are many different types of fertility treatments but as assisted hatching is performed during the  IVF process this is the treatment that we will concentrate on here.

IVF is the process of fertilising a woman’s eggs outside her body in a test tube. Since the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, was born in Britain in 1978 IVF has produced over one million babies worldwide. As the procedure has been improved and refined the rate of pregnancy and live births have increased steadily year on year, resulting in a large increase in the number of IVF treatment cycles performed worldwide.

For whom is IVF is advised?

IVF is often recommended to certain groups of people, these include:

• Women with damaged or blocked fallopian tubes or whose tubes have been removed after an ectopic pregnancy or for other reasons.
• Endometriosis sufferers.
• Women with cervical mucus which is too scarce, sticky or acidic.
• Men with poor morphology, motility or quantity.
• Men or women with immunological infertility problems.
• Couples with unexplained infertility.

There are further criteria used to determine whether assisted hatching should be performed on the embryos produced during IVF and these will be discussed later on.