Many IVF clinics bulldoze their patients into transferring embryos on day 3 . They tell them that the uterus is the best place for a day 3 embryo rather than the incubator, and that’s why it’s best to transfer back as soon as possible.
They also scare them by telling them that if they continue culturing the embryos in the incubator and try to grow them to Day 5 ( blastocyst), their embryos may arrest , and they will not have any embryos left to transfer .
Patients are scared about taking that risk , and because they trust the doctor blindly , they accept the doctor’s advice, and go ahead with the day 3 transfer . Because these are day 3 embryos, and the IVF lab is not very good, the doctor often send up transferring more embryos to increase the chances of at least one of these embryos implanting.
This means that these patients don’t have any spare embryos to freeze , and they also run a real risk of a multiple pregnancy , because the doctor has put back so many embryos.
The reason doctors take this shortcut is not because this is the right thing to do . In fact, they are lying to their patients. They do this because they don’t have any confidence in their IVF lab , and the ability of their embryologist to be able to grow embryos reliably to Day 5 . Many of these clinics depend upon travelling embryologists to do their lab procedures for them, and they don’t employ full-time experienced, expert embryologists.
This is why they try to put back embryos as quickly as possible into the uterus , even on day 3, because if the cycle then fails , they can blame the patient’s bad luck , rather than accept responsibility for the fact that the cycle failed because they did not have the right medical facilities and were not able to grow embryos to Day 5.
Most patients learn the bitter truth only after the IVF cycle fails, which is when they start doing their homework . This is when they find out that the right place for a day 3 embryo is the fallopian tube , and not the uterus !
This does not means that Day 3 embryos cannot implant , but there is no reason to transfer Day 3 embryos to the uterus if you have a good quality IVF lab . A good IVF lab is very confident in its ability to grow embryos routinely to Day 5 – after all, that is the purpose of a good IVF lab !
The advantage of doing only day 5 transfers is that you only need to transfer one single top quality blastocyst, and can freeze the rest , which means patients can have multiple transfers, without having to go through the expense of another fresh cycle !
The cumulative conception rate with single blastocyst transfers is better as compared to transferring three Day 3 embryos in one single fresh cycle .
Please do your homework , and make sure that you choose a clinic which does only blastocyst transfers, and provides photos of embryos routinely and proactively to all their patients.
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