Clinical and neonatal outcomes of complete zona pellucida removal by laser-assisted hatching after single vitrified-warmed blastocyst transfer

Laser-assisted hatching (LAH) is a widely used and unavoidable technique in assisted reproductive technology after frozen embryo transfer (FET). We aimed to investigate the safety and efficacy of completely ZP (zona pellucida) removed by an assisted laser group compared to an intact group after FET. This retrospective study involved 320 SVBT single vitrified-warmed blastocyst transfers of 213 patients who underwent clomiphene citrate (CC) based minimal stimulation protocol. This study compared 160 SVBT with ZP that were completely removed using laser-assisted (laser beams of 10-15, a wavelength of 1.48 μm, and duration of 1.8-2.2 ms) to 160 cases of intact SVBT. Fisher's exact test, chi-squared test, and logistic regression are used for statistical analysis. The women's age, cause of infertility, BMI, transferred embryo day, insemination methods, and blastocyst grade were not significantly different between two groups. The implantation rate (66.2% vs. 51.2%, P < 0.01), the clinical pregnancy rate (CPR, 52.5% vs. 39.3%, P = 0.01), and the live birth rate (LBR, 43.7% vs. 29.3%, P < 0.01) were significantly higher in the completely ZP removed than the intact group. In logistic regression analysis, the laser-assisted hatching group showed about 2 times higher implantation rate and CPR and LBR than the control group. But miscarriage, gestational weeks, gender, birth weight, and twin births were insignificant between two groups. Our study suggests ZP free embryo transfer by assisted laser is more effective and safer than intact embryo transfer.