To compare the rates of blastocyst stage development between embryos fertilized after one (MPN) or more than two pronucleus (PN) (3PN, 4PN-multiPN) with those after 2PN in the same patients.
The embryos of patients who had both abnormal PN (MPN, 3PN or 4PN) and normal fertilized (2PN) embryos after intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) fertilization, were followed with a time-lapse system following the ICSI procedure. The rates of reaching the blastocyst stage were compared between normal and abnormally fertilized embryos.
One thousand eight hundred and twenty oocytes were collected from 140 patients and 1280 (70.3%) of them were fertilized. MPN, 2PN and 3PN, 4PN (multiPN) ratios of the embryos in the pronuclear stage were 11.4%, 83.13% and 5.47%, respectively. The rates of reaching the blastocyst stage among these embryos were 17.1%, 60.8% and 42.8% for MPN, 2PN and multiPN, respectively. The proportion reaching blastocyst development was significantly higher following 2PN compared to those after MPN and multiPN (p<0.05). Embryos developing after multiPN had significantly higher rates of reaching the blastocyst stage compared to those after MPN (p<0.01).