Role of the patient's social features in the destiny of cryopreserved surplus embryos

Abstract

Background and objective

With the advances in assisted reproduction techniques and above all thanks to the implementation of vitrification, there are more and more surplus pre-embryos in assisted reproduction cycles.

Material and methods

Retrospective observational study.

Results

The maternal age of patients who decided to donate their pre-embryos to other patients (41.38 ± 4.55) was higher than those who preferred to donate to research (39.56 ± 4.89), keep them for future use (37.38 ± 4.72), or discard them for no other purpose (40.87 ± 5.21) p-value: <0.05.

International patients decide to discard their pre-embryos for no other purpose (26.81% vs 21.30%; p-value: <0.05) or donate them to other couples (19.56% vs 14.04; p-value: <0.05) in greater proportion than national patients. In contrast, the percentage of national patients who decide to donate their embryos to research is greater than that of international patients (35.84% vs 28.50%; p-value: <0.05).

When we compared the responses obtained in terms of the origin of the oocytes (own or donated), we found that those who used donated oocytes decided to donate them to other couples in a higher percentage than those who used their own oocytes (21.67% vs 5.26%; p-value: >0.05). Patients who used donated oocytes decided to keep their pre-embryos in a lower percentage than patients who used their own oocytes (21.44% vs 41.75; p-value: <0.05).

Conclusions

According to this study, maternal age, nationality and origin of the oocytes are factors that can influence patients’ decisions about what to do with their surplus embryos from assisted reproduction cycles. In addition, it reiterates as in other studies that an improvement in the processes and circuits is necessary to obtain a greater number of responses from patients more.