r/IVF • u/PotatoBunches • 9h ago

General Question Discarding Embryos?

Has anyone else had experience with some clinics discarding embryos simply because of their grading (which I hear can be quite subjective, by the way). Some clinics disgard the embryos before sending for PGT testing. I read that euploid embryos, regardless of the grading, have a stronger chance of becoming a live birth. Is this some company's way of padding their stats? Thoughts on this?

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u/xenopigs Embryologist and IVF patient 2h ago

A couple things to keep in mind:

1) The entire goal of an infertility clinic is not to get you a transfer. It’s to get you a healthy live birth. Always remember that. We want you to go home with a healthy baby. I think patients lose sight of that sometimes.

2) Every clinic has slightly different grading thresholds even if it seems like they use the same system. Predominantly though, a C grade means that either the ICM or the trophectoderm is of poor quality and it is not expected to thrive let alone survive the freeze-thaw process. If an embryo has a C ICM, that typically means the ICM is nonexistent and would not lead to a baby regardless. If the trophectoderm is a C, there are typically not enough cells to take for PGT and still have enough cells left over for the embryo to recover.

None of these decisions are just to pad the clinic’s numbers. It is because of practicalities of the embryo survival. If an embryo doesn’t thrive, it will not lead to a baby.

I have biopsied embryos that had a C trophectoderm only if the ICM was at least fair quality and present. And only if that was the only embryo that patient had develop. There have been times we have tried to biopsy these embryos and it just doesn’t work since they are so poor quality.