Assisted hatching technique
What is assisted hatching?
MACS - Magnetic Activated Cell Sorting
On day 2 or 3 after fertilisation, the embryo is made up of four or eight cells and a pellucid zone, which is a kind of envelope that protects the embryo in its first days of development, and breaks on the sixth day so that the embryo can emerge and implant itself in the endometrium or uterine wall.
In some cases, and due to different causes, this hatching does not occur naturally. In order to solve this problem we can apply assisted hatching, which consists of making a small hole in the pelvic area prior to transfer, in order to facilitate hatching on the sixth day after fertilisation, thus providing us with a higher rate of embryo implantation and therefore a higher rate of gestation.
When is this technique applied?
This technique is applied in cases where there have been prior implantation problems, where the quality and development of the embryos is not right, where the patient is over a certain age, and where the pellucid zone of the embryo is abnormally swollen.
