Microbial contamination of embryo cultures in an ART laboratory: sources and management.

Background: Although rare, microbial contamination of culture dishes occasionally occurs in our IVF/ICSI programme. Despite stringent culture conditions and the use of medium containing penicillin and streptomycin, an increasing number of infections was observed once they were routinely recorded. In this study, 95 cases of contaminated culture dishes were examined, in an attempt to identify possible causes.