Reliability and agreement on embryo assessment: 5 years of an external quality control programme.
Reprod Biomed Online
; 36(3): 259-268, 2018 Mar.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-29339017
ABSTRACT
An external quality-control programme for morphology-based embryo quality assessment, incorporating a standardized embryo grading scheme, was evaluated over a period of 5 years to determine levels of inter-observer reliability and agreement between practising clinical embryologists at IVF centres and the opinions of a panel of experts. Following Guidelines for Reporting Reliability and Agreement Studies, the Gwet index and proportion of positive (Ppos) and negative agreement were calculated. For embryo morphology assessment, a substantial degree of reliability was measured between the centres and the panel of experts (Gwet index 0.76; 95% CI 0.70 to 0.84). The agreement was higher for good- versus poor-quality embryos. When multinucleation or vacuoles were observed, low levels of reliability were obtained (Ppos 0.56 and 0.43, respectively). In blastocysts, the characteristic that presented the largest discrepancy was that related to the inner cell mass. In decisions about the final disposition of the embryo, reliability between centre and the panel of experts was moderate (Gwet index 0.51; 95% CI 0.41 to 0.60). In conclusion, the ability of clinical embryologists to evaluate the presence of multinucleation and vacuoles in the early cleavage embryo, and to determine the category of the inner cell mass in blastocysts, needs to be improved.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Quality Control
/
Blastocyst
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Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
/
Embryonic Development
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Embryo, Mammalian
Type of study:
Guideline
/
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Female
/
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Reprod Biomed Online
Journal subject:
MEDICINA REPRODUTIVA
Year:
2018
Document type:
Article
Publication country:
HOLANDA
/
HOLLAND
/
NETHERLANDS
/
NL
/
PAISES BAJOS
/
THE NETHERLANDS