Hello Prof Winston
The service you are providing here is much appreciated – thank you.
When I was 41 I conceived naturally (by accident) but miscarried at week 6. I then looked into IVF, was said to be a good candidate for IVF given my AMH and ovarian reserve, and have just (at age 42) finished two rounds of egg collection via IVF – heavily medicated!
In total I produced 26 eggs, of which 22 fertilised and 16 made it to day 5 / 6 blastocysts. I opted for PGS [Preimplantation Genetic Screening] testing understanding that due to my age a high number of these blastocysts would be abnormal and I wanted to make sure we (as far as we can tell with currently available technology) put the best one back and hopefully have some reserves as of course not every egg works.
Unfortunately only one egg was Euploid, graded A, 2 had no results due to insufficient DNA (of which 1 egg is graded B – the other said to be poor quality), 1 was low-level mosaic, but Chromosome 21, and the rest abnormal (5 blastocysts) or complex abnormal (7).
I wanted to ask your thoughts on how reliable PGS testing is, in particular I wanted to get your thoughts on what the science says around the possibility of the abnormal blastocysts self correcting as they grow? I may have one of the no result blastocysts re-biopsied – I don’t want to waste time on an embryo that will abort if it is chromosomally abnormal – would you recommend that? Even though there is more potential for damage given the thawing-biopsy-freezing process, of which I think little is known especially of the long term effects.
I wanted to get more opinions on this before considering a further round of egg collection. My previous two rounds were fine – but I worry that injecting high volume of hormones isn’t the best thing I can do to my body and the financial cost is huge.
Many thanks,
L
Dear L,
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