Assisted hatching in the treatment of poor prognosis in vitro fertilization candidates

Objective: To access the effect of augmenting IVF with assisted hatching in the treatment of poor-prognosis patients. Design: Thirty-three poor- prognosis IVF patients were treated with assisted hatching and were compared with 43 control subjects without assisted hatching. Setting: Center for Reproductive Medicine, Swedish Medical Center, Englewood, Colorado. Participants: Seventy-six women undergoing IVF with a poor prognosis for pregnancy. Poor prognosis was defined as Elevated day 3 FSH level; age ≥ 39 years; and multiple prior IVF failures. Main Outcome Measures: Pregnancy and implantation rates per embryo. Results: The incidence of ongoing pregnancy in the assisted hatching group was 64% compared with 19% in the control group. Implantation rate per embryo transferred was 33% in the assisted hatching group versus 6.5% in the control group. Conclusions: These results demonstrate that assisted hatching, when applied to poor-prognosis patients, improves embryonic implantation and pregnancy rates.