ANALYSIS OF EMBRYO SCORING AND COMPARISON OF CLINIC PERFORMANCE IN IN-VITRO FERTILIZATION

• Main Author: Whistler, James W
• Format: Others
• Published: DigitalCommons@CalPoly 2015
• Subjects: IVF; Embryo Scoring; Clinic Comparisons; Contingency Tables; Data Mining; Obstetrics and Gynecology
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/1376; https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2501&context=theses

Clinical Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) practices seek to make improvements in embryo quality and resultant procedural success rates. There is a significant variance in live birth rates among clinics nationwide. The goal of this thesis is make comparisons of embryo quality among clinics and understand these differences. This analysis focuses on the stage between egg retrieval and embryo transfer. Because the currently accepted embryo scoring methods are not directly proportional to performance, a new scoring methodology is proposed and applied. Data provided by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) consisting of 36,836 patient cycles from 40 anonymous clinics nationwide is considered. After necessary reductions are made, the data is anatomized to link each embryo transferred to an implantation probability. A score is generated for each morphology grouping based on the average implantation rate of that group. This score is used as the basis for clinic comparisons. Top-performing clinics (in terms of live birth rates in patients agedold) are then shown to both produce embryos of higher score and achieve better results from embryos of identical morphology.