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Gas concentration tolerance level |
By:
May,
28 August 2009
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Hi.
Situation: Gas manifold system becomes faulty causing an interuption in gas flow into the incubator. Doors of incubators remain closed at this moment. Therefore, CO2 concentration in the incubators remain stable.
Question: What is the tolerance level (in terms of minutes) of the incubator/embryos before the fault can be rectified? In other words, how long can one take to make sure the embryos are still happy in the environment while fixing the problem?
Penny for your thoughts. Thanks
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Michael L Reed said on 29 August 2009
"Regarding May's question on pH stability in an incubator that is not functioning correctly, I would add my 1-cent worth of advice - maybe even 2-cents.
Yes - do not open the incubator under this circumstance, unless you have another incubator to move the embryos to. If you do have another incubator, then absolutely move the embryos. This is a strange phenomenon that most of us experience, where we feel the need to open the incubator to "see" if everything is ok when the incubator does something unexpected.
For the first penny: there is a good discussion in the Clinical Embryologist, by Joe Conaghan (summer 2008 issue) where he states that if microdrop culture is being done, under mineral oil, pH remained "relatively stable" for up to 10 minutes when the dish was removed from the incubator. Media without oil overlay, the pH began to change immediately after removal from the incubator. So your question, in part, can be answered by how you culture. If you use mineral oil, you have the gas "sink" effect of the oil overlay to help avoid fluctuations in the microdrops. If not, you would see changes according to fluctuations.
For the second penny, I would say that this is a good example of a QA study for any lab - what happens when you have an incubator or gas failure? How long does temperature or pH remain stable? A good emergency backup plan should spell this out. Manufacturers have actually done the temperature graphs, but I'm not sure about gas changes.
I use glass pyrex jars as mini-incubators, so I'm protected from gas failure, but temperature failure or fluctuations is still a concern.
Bottom line - the incubator is not functioning correctly, so get the embryos to a safe place - the uterus and/or cryopreserved. Then fix the problem.
Mike"
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