Blastocyst culture depends on quality of embryos on day 3, not quantity

Study objective: Our aim was to find whether the number really matters and if good blastocysts can be developed even with less numbers on day 3 provided quality is good.Design: A retrospective analysis of all fresh ICSI cycles with a maximum of 6 embryos on day 3, excluding Donor Oocyte, donor embryo and frozen embryo cycles was done.Setting: A Tertiary Infertility Centre in the metro city Chennai, India.Materials and methods: A total number of 84 ICSI cycles with 320 embryos were categorized into six groups based on the day 3 embryo numbers in each cohort.Main outcome measure: ANOVA was used to compare the mean blastocyst formation between these groups and was statistically significant (P = 0.000). Diagnostic Efficacy for these groups was tested using F1 Score and Mathew’s Correlation Coefficient.Conclusion: Incidence of blast formation rate for the Case group with embryos (1–3) was observed to be 91.5% and 83.2% for the Control group with embryos (>3) and was significant with an overall pregnancy rate 40.5%. Blastocyst culture is possible even with less numbers on day 3 if the quality of embryos is good.