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Your physician will help you decide if Assisted Hatching may be useful to you. Assisted hatching may be considered for patients who are able to achieve good fertilization and cell division but do not conceive. This procedure involves the same general procedure as standard IVF up until the time just before embryo transfer.

On the day of your embryo transfer, the fertilized eggs (embryos) that are to be transferred are carefully evaluated. Depending on the stage of development, some of the zona pellucida (the shell around the embryo) is removed. The goal of this procedure is to increase the chance that an embryo will implant. Assisted hatching may be routinely done on Blastocyst Embryos and frozen thawed embryos.

There is a small potential risk that the embryo may be damaged by the actual hatching procedure, but this is believed to only affect the ability of that embryo to lead to a pregnancy, not increase the risk of birth defects.

Some small changes in your medication protocol (after egg retrieval) may be required with this treatment. These may include the use of a steroid type of drug (Prednisone; 60 mg a day starting the night before your transfer). This steroid is thought to potentially decrease the chance of an antibody/immune response to your embryos. This is the only change that you will experience with YOUR medications with all other modifications to the standard IVF protocol taking place in the IVF laboratory.

The decision to proceed with the Assisted Hatching procedure is one which should be discussed with your physician and partner prior to the time of initiating any of your medications for IVF to facilitate coordinating your care with the IVF laboratory.

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