Being the nerdly type I've always been, I spent a decent portion of lunch time today reviewing the published literature about success rates based on endometrial lining thickness and oocyte maturity based on follicle size. I know I have no control over what happens for the next two weeks, but obsessively reading related information is my coping strategy!
To my extreme irritation, I deleted my entire list of endometrial thickness references, but for anyone who wonders 'what size follicle can produce a mature egg', here are a few gems.
Follicles as small as 12-14.5mm, on the day of retrieval, have up to 80% of eggs mature (e.g., metaphase II). However, fertilization was only 47% in this group, compared to 67% in eggs from follicles 18.5mm and grater.
Source: Mehri, Levi Setti, Greco, Sakkas, Martinez, Patrizio, J Assist Reprod Genet., 2014. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24189964
Follicles greater than 14 on the day of retrieval produce recoverable eggs 85.5% of the time, follicles from 10-14 do 79.6% of the time. Of those retrieved greater than 14 on day of retrieval, 93.3% are mature, while those 10-14 show 81% mature. The larger eggs fertilize 80% of the time, while the smaller do 75.4% of the time. The biggest difference? The larger follicles produce a higher percentage of embryos scored as "good" by the study researchers. Source: Triwitayakorn, Suwajanakorn,1 Pruksananonda, Sereepapong, and Ahnonkitpanit. J Assist Reprod Genet., 2003. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3455636/pdf/10815_2004_Article_461190.pdf To be fair, those numbers seem implausibly high to me, but interesting none the less.
Try as I might, I couldn't find any evidence regarding what size follicles will ovulate during a OI/TI cycle, when no retrieval occurs. I'll assume I had two mature, and go from there.
It amazes me how little information is out there on information like this. We know about lining morphology, but thickness isn’t something that has been quantified.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reading material. And I’m rooting for you!
Fascinating stuff. I loved learning about all these things when I was going through it, and you take it to a whole new level! It's interesting to me how these benchmarks change and how they can do things now to mature retrieved eggs after the fact. I hope that you have two mature and all goes smoothly! I wish there was more information on endometrial thickness, because it was incredibly frustrating to find at the end of my journey that they decided that my lining had always been on the thin side and was a contributor, when they never said that in earlier cycles (but were thinking it? Or the research was updated? Unclear). This is one of those fields where I feel new information is always coming out. Thanks for sharing what you found! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed at your research! Makes me think that we (as a community) should start a repository of academic papers (with quick summaries).
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