Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 16, 2026
Fertility Preservation Through Oocyte Vitrification: Clinical and Laboratory Perspectives
Published on: September 16, 2021
How does closed system vitrification of human oocytes affect the clinical outcome? A prospective, observational,
Achilleas Papatheodorou1, Pierre Vanderzwalmen2, Yannis Panagiotidis3
1IAKENTRO Advanced Medical Center, Thessaloniki, Greece; Center for Reproductive Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Ioannina University, Ioannina, Greece.
Objective:
To evaluate whether is possible to vitrify oocytes in an aseptic (hermetically closed) fashion and maintain clinical results comparable with those of fresh oocytes.
Design:
Prospective, observational, cohort, noninferiority trial.
Setting:
Private in vitro fertilization center.
Patient(S):
One hundred eighty-four recipients of donated vitrified oocytes.
Intervention(S):
Closed system vitrification.
Main Outcome Measure(S):
Pregnancy rate per cycle and clinical pregnancy rate per cycle.
Result(S):
No statistically significant differences were observed between two groups regarding the pregnancy rate per cycle (63.1% vs. 60.9%) or the clinical pregnancy rate per cycle (55.4% vs. 58.7%). Biochemical pregnancy rate was statistically significantly higher in the fresh group (7.6% vs. 2.2%). The mean number of embryos transferred was similar (2.0 ± 0.0 vs. 1.97 ± 0.3). Concerning embryologic data, there were no statistically significant differences regarding the fertilization, cleavage, top quality day-3 embryo, or blastocyst rates, whereas the top quality blastocyst rate on day 5 was statistically significantly higher in the fresh oocyte group (31.7% vs. 26.1%).
Conclusion(S):
Aseptically (in a closed system) vitrified oocytes show similar clinical efficiency compared with their sibling fresh oocytes.
