IVF clinics in Spain

[Raasgul]

Hello All,

I am looking to get Donor Egg IVF done in Spain. We have narrowed it down to 3 clinics (recommendations from friends and doctors). Which ones would you recommend for Donor Eggs IVF?

1. Institute Ceram in Marbella
2. Embriogyn: embriogyn.com/
3. Clinica Tambre in Madrid: clinicatambre.co.uk/

Does anybody have any experience in any of the 3 clinics above that they can share (good or bad are both welcome!)

Thanks for your help!

[lucyjkIreland]

I have been to Clinica Tambre for egg freezing. It was fantastic, I cannot recommend it enough. My best friend also went and had the same great experience. So highly recommend. DM me if you want no prob

[Fabsco]

Dear all,

My husband and I are also considering treatment in Spain after two unsuccessful rounds with our local clinic. I heard wonderful things about IVI Spain but was disappointed by their approach... I received a general email and a link to access the portal, which was unavailable after one week. I have since contacted the following clinics:

Clinica Tambre: I got a lovely personalised email and a phone call from them one day after contacting them;
UR Vistahermosa: Friendly staff on the phone, very patient and answered all my queries;
IVF Spain: Also friendly on the phone, but the first consultation must be face-to-face?

Any opinions about the clinics above? Thank you for your feedback on them, and good luck in your treatment!

[ellejones12]

Hello,lovelies,

After several disappointing appointments with my GP and my gynaecologist, I am afraid that it is necessary for me to undergo egg donation treatment and I am considering travelling to Spain for this. I have been researching and don't know whether to go to Ginefiv, Tambre or IVF Spain. Can anyone shed any light on these clinics?

[Fabsco]

Hello @ellejones12, I'm sorry your GP and gynaecologist didn't help you with treatment, and I can definitely relate to it. I had both my GP and gynae consultants telling me that I didn't need fibroid removal surgery... My fibroid was 18 cm! I made an appointment with a private gynae who told me that I needed surgery straight away.

I had two unsuccessful IVF cycles in the UK and also hope to start our third treatment in Spain. I contacted four clinics: Tambre, Instituto Bernabeu, IVF Spain, and UR Vistahermosa. Communication has been great with them all and I have online consultations with them in the next two weeks, apart from IB which only had available appointments late September.

UR Vistahermosa seems to be a smaller clinic and treatments are reasonably priced. They also have a helpful payment plan, in which you pay 70% at the start of treatment and 30% in 12 instalments. It is our favourite at the moment. My consultation with them in this Wednesday, so I can come back here to let you know how it went.

Good luck with your treatment and hope that your baby will be in your arms soon. ❤️

[Fabsco]

Hello,

As promised, I am back here to give you my first impressions of clinics in Spain. I had my first online consultation with UR Vistahermosa today and both the doctor and the coordinator were friendly and answered patiently to all the questions that we had. I noticed that they both went through all my history and asked specific questions about my previous treatments. The only surprising thing was that they suggested egg donation straight away? I am 39 and feel that I wanted to have another go with my own eggs.

They seem to think that my previous cycles were unsuccessful because of egg quality. I asked if I could perhaps do multiple egg collections and do PGT on embryos prior to transfer, to reduce the chance of miscarriage. They said that they can offer this treatment to me if that's what I want, but the consultant insisted that, if it is was up to him, he would go for egg donation as the chances of success as higher.

I'm a bit out of sorts after this consultation, to be honest. Did anyone else feel that Spanish clinics push for egg donation? Thank you for sharing your views and experiences here; it has been very helpful!

[ellejones12]

Dear @Fabsco,

Thank you very much for your reply and all the information you share!. I am sorry that we both had to go through difficult times with our respective doctors.... The good thing is that we are now going to choose to be in good hands, whichever clinic we choose :) I hadn't considered Vistahermosa, tbh. The only one I've had a first visit with so far has been Tambre. The truth is that I was happy with the attention I received. In my case I can't talk about whether Spanish clinics push you to egg donation, because unfortunately for me, I have no other option. However, Dr. Garcia from Tambre was very empathetic with me, she explained all the stages of the process very well and the truth is that I am very confident about the donor selection system they carry out. I will keep you posted on my experiences with the rest of the clinics, I am even thinking about going to Spain to do the clinic tour and see how each clinic makes me feel...

[Carajillo]

Hello!
I hope you don't mind me sharing my experience. I am a solo mum to 14 year old twins conceived in Spain. One thing to bear in mind is that donors are of course anonymous in Spain and not only that, most clinics only give age and blood group of their donors.

This lack of information has been really hard for my kids and has led them both to submit DNA to try and find out where they come from and even locate their donors and any siblings. They just found it very hard when they asked questions on even the most basic things like height etc and I couldn't answer them!

It may be that will help you choose for example, a Spanish clinic with more information. If you do want to consider an identity release at 18 donor, then I just wanted to let you know that Portugal now have ID release donors as well as the Scandanavian countries and UK.

I do know how hard it is to think ahead about a child that isn't even here yet, and also how important it is to find a clinic that will actually get you a baby, but I just wanted to add this information in case it helps anyone to make a decision.

Best of luck to you all!

C xx

[Fabsco]

@ellejones12 It's a good idea to visit the clinics in person; my husband and I are also considering doing that. We haven't had many tests that the clinics recommend yet, even though we have done IVF twice... So we might fly to Spain and have them done there. I have my online consultation with Tambre on Monday and will get back here to share my impressions. Good luck with your decision and I'm sure it will lead to a successful pregnancy in the future!

[Fabsco]

@Carajillo Thank you for sharing your journey and I think we have been messaging each other on FF? Portugal would definitely been an option for us as I have friends who live in Lisbon and I could stay with them during treatment. I hadn't even thought about Portugal as a destination for IVF treatment. Most discussion forums mention Spain, Czech, Greece. I will do my research now! Many thanks for sharing this with us!

[Mudra85]

Hi @Fabsco I am also considering Clinica Tambre and have a first consultation booked in with them in a couple of weeks' time. I was just wondering how you found your consultation with them and if you decided to go with them in the end?

[Fabsco]

@Mudra85 My consultation with Clinica Tambre was lovely. I was assigned to Dr Alicia, who was very patient with me and explained everything in detail. I previously had an appointment with UR Vistahermosa and hadn't had a good experience with them - I thought that the consultant hadn't read my notes carefully and seemed to think that I should move on to egg donation. Dr. Alicia had a very different approach and advised me to investigate all other areas before making that decision, e.g. thrombophilia, endometriosis, karyotyping, etc. I have started these investigations at home and this week got the diagnosis that I have Lupus. Most likely my pregnancy losses were caused by it and I should be on baby aspirin and Heparin injections from embryo transfer. I am very thankful to Dr. Alicia for recommending these investigations. We haven't started treatment with them yet, but it was mostly because of covid and travel restrictions. Now that quarantine isn't required anymore, we are planning to go over in the new year. Please let me know if you need information about other clinics; I had initial consultations with a couple of clinics in Spain, Czech Republic, UK and Ireland. Good luck with your treatment and lots of baby dust your way!

[Mudra85]

Thanks @Fabsco that's really helpful! It does sound like they've been thorough by recommending those investigations to you, and it's good they've found the reason why your previous pregnancy losses may have occurred and can treat you accordingly.

I've been assigned to Dr. Marban and she reviewed the documents I provided to the clinic only 2 days after my consultation appointment with her was confirmed - so first impressions have been good so far!

One question I have about Clinica Tambre is whether they require patients to do a preparation month the month prior to starting an IVF cycle. My UK clinic has patients take progesterone pills for 12 days from day 14 of their menstrual cycle. After 12 days you stop taking the pills, wait for a bleed and when that happens you can go in for your baseline scan. Do you know if Clinica Tambre do this or whether the first day of your natural period triggers the start of your IVF cycle?

I have consultations booked in with IVI Madrid and Clinica Tambre only at the moment. I don't suppose IVI Madrid was one of the other Spanish clinics you looked into?

Good luck with your treatment too. I hope the third time is a charm!

[Eiremogra]

Hi all,I’m at the very beginning stages of checking our ED options in Spain. This thread is super helpful! Due to my low AMH my consultant has advised we consider ED and forget about IVF (have had 1 failed round). I’m still ‘processing’ that info…unsure if I should give it one last try with my own eggs. I haven’t had any consultation with the Spanish clinics as yet but was hoping to discuss this as an option with them and if the opinion is repeated re: ED then I would happily go with that. So many questions running through my head!x

[Fabsco]

@Mudra85

Thanks *@Fabsco* that's really helpful! It does sound like they've been thorough by recommending those investigations to you, and it's good they've found the reason why your previous pregnancy losses may have occurred and can treat you accordingly.

I've been assigned to Dr. Marban and she reviewed the documents I provided to the clinic only 2 days after my consultation appointment with her was confirmed - so first impressions have been good so far!

One question I have about Clinica Tambre is whether they require patients to do a preparation month the month prior to starting an IVF cycle. My UK clinic has patients take progesterone pills for 12 days from day 14 of their menstrual cycle. After 12 days you stop taking the pills, wait for a bleed and when that happens you can go in for your baseline scan. Do you know if Clinica Tambre do this or whether the first day of your natural period triggers the start of your IVF cycle?

I have consultations booked in with IVI Madrid and Clinica Tambre only at the moment. I don't suppose IVI Madrid was one of the other Spanish clinics you looked into?

Good luck with your treatment too. I hope the third time is a charm!

Hi @Mudra85, I contacted IVI Alicante as well but was never offered a consultation. They gave me access to their portal for around a week but the ID and password didn't work after that. No follow up, nothing. I was disappointed because IVI clinics were highly recommended to me by a doctor friend, but I take IVI Alicante already has a lot of patients and doesn't need to chase new ones. IVI Madrid is hopefully different and will analyse your case carefully and thoroughly.

Dr Alicia explained to me that I would be on a pill prior to treatment, so I understand that pre-treatment preparation is required. The only clinic that didn't recommend pre-treatment prep was Gennet in Prague. I guess that the pill lets them plan for your cycle and prevents follicles from growing at different rates. As I have thrombophilia, I will be on Norethisterone rather than standard birth control pills.

Good luck with your initial appointments and please let me know how they went!

[Fabsco]

@Eiremogra

Hi all,I’m at the very beginning stages of checking our ED options in Spain. This thread is super helpful! Due to my low AMH my consultant has advised we consider ED and forget about IVF (have had 1 failed round). I’m still ‘processing’ that info…unsure if I should give it one last try with my own eggs. I haven’t had any consultation with the Spanish clinics as yet but was hoping to discuss this as an option with them and if the opinion is repeated re: ED then I would happily go with that. So many questions running through my head!x

@Eiremogra I completely get what you mean by 'processing' the recommendation to go for ED. After my second IVF cycle in the UK, I booked initial appointments with several clinics across Europe and the first appointment was with UR Vistahermosa. The coordinator was lovely and told me that she booked me in with the Clinic Director, who was a very experienced doctor. I had high hopes for that consultation, only to realise that he focused on the fact that I had two 'failed' IVF cycles in the UK and, out of 15 eggs retrieved in both cycles, only got pregnant once. Based on that logic, my chances of getting pregnant with my own eggs were low and I should consider egg donation. I was 39 at the time and thought that it was a rushed decision to move to ED without giving another go with my own eggs.

I then had consultations with nine other clinics and wasn't recommended ED once. When I asked about ED, all the other consultants told me that, even though I had a miscarriage in my last cycle, the outcome was positive with two grade A blastocysts out of six eggs.

You're absolutely right in getting a second, third, fourth opinion before deciding the best course of treatment for you. I discuss ED in my counselling and have come to the realisation that I will be happy to move to it if my third IVF cycle fails. It is important to establish a limit. Discussing ED in my counselling also made me realise that I want my future children through ED to be able to identify who their donor is when they turn 16, which is possible to do if you go through treatment in Portugal, but not in Spain. There's a lot to consider in these decisions, but the bottom line is that counselling is paramount!

I wish you the best of luck in your treatment and know that you'll have your baby in your arms soon, regardless of the treatment choice you make.

[Mudra85]

Thanks so much for taking the time to provide this extra info to me @Fabsco

IVI Madrid have so far been very responsive and have gotten back to me quickly about all my queries, but I've seen mixed reviews about some of IVI clinics.

It sounds like most clinics both here and abroad will have patients do pre-treatment prep of some sort. My UK clinic had me take norethisterone for 12 days, but I know other people who had to take for less time than that. I was hoping I might be able to speed things up a bit by avoiding the pre-treatment prep, but it sounds like it's very common and, as you say, it helps them plan in your treatment.

I'll be sure to update on here after I've had my consultations in the next fortnight.

[Fabsco]

@Mudra85 Good luck with your appointments!

[Eiremogra]

@Fabsco @Mudra85 Thank you both so much for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate your take on things and the invaluable experiences that you have shared. I feel so ‘muddled’ at the minute…at least when we were doing our first round of IVF there was a plan,a clear path…and now that it’s failed and we’re having to once again consider options, I feel overwhelmed. Im usually such a focused person so this is just awful!
My partner has gotten in touch with GCRM (Glasgow) and Create (Manchester) for advice but I’m still keen to investigate our options on Spain. The reality is we can’t have several consultations in lots of different places as financially we don’t have that luxury. I therefore really need to do my homework and source some solid information on the clinics abroad before committing to a consultation. x

[Mudra85]

Hi everyone,

I said I'd update on here after we'd had our consultations with both IVI Madrid and Clinica Tambre.

Our consultation with IVI Madrid was shorter than expected. It was meant to be 45 minutes but lasted around 30. Their approach was to do back to back IVF cycles to bank frozen eggs which could then be thawed, biopsied and sent for testing. The consultant also asked us the usual questions (e.g. height, weight, whether we're smokers etc) and recommended that we do a karyotype blood test.

Our consultation with Clinica Tambre lasted the full hour and the consultant went through the details of our case very thoroughly. We found her to be very personable, empathetic and knowledgeable. She explained what tests and treatment she'd recommend for us and why. It's probably the best consultation I've had since first embarking on IVF (to recap I've previously had one failed NHS-funded cycle at a private clinic in the UK). She recommended that we have a kayrotype blood test and sperm DNA fragmentation test in addition to the standard fertility tests (e.g. AMH, FSH, semen analysis etc). She also recommended that I have an ERA, EMMA and ALICE test, given I've had a biochemical pregnancy of a PGT normal embryo. We also discussed what supplements we should both be taking and she recommended Ovasitol for me to potentially improve my egg quality and hopefully get some more PGT normal embryos (I don't have PCOS, but Ovasitol can help to improve egg quality of women without PCOS).

We've decided to go ahead with Clinica Tambre and will be flying out to Spain in the next couple of weeks to have the tests I've mentioned above (they're significantly cheaper in Spain than in the UK, even with the cost of flights/travel). We'd then expect to have a second consultation (where we run through our test results and treatment plan) in early January, and hopefully we'll be able to start treatment asap after that.

Happy to answer any questions if anyone has any.

[Nessylink]

Hi! I'm flying over to Spain in Feb to meet with IVF Spain Madrid (previously Procreatec) and Tambre Madrid and get required initial tests done. We had video consults with both and liked them very much and are having a hard time choosing, so I would love to hear how your experiences with those 2 clinics were?
We also did a remote consult with IVI Madrid. We liked the doc but he had obviously not pre-read our file, and it was hard to communicate with them (portal only, didn't have an email contact person etc -- and there has been no follow up from their side at all since we talked to them months ago), so we have eliminated them from our options.

The doc we liked at IVF Spain (Dr Calomarde) has since left, and the doc at Tambre we had our consultation with (Dr Alicia) is actually in Alicante so doubt she would do more than consult from afar (but she was amazing in the consult :))

Any real world experience with either Tambre or IvF Spain Madrid?

[CentaurChiron]

Hi @Nessylink we have decided to go with Clinica Tambre and recently flew over to have all our initial tests done. So far they've been great. We're expecting to fly back there for our IVF cycle in February. We also had Dr Alicia for our initial consultation and she was brilliant, but like you say she's works from Alicante. From what I was told Dr Alicia helps with the initial consultations. Our Doctor at Tambre will actually be Dr Marban. We've also been very impressed with her.
Overall my experience of Clinica Tambre has been that they're very thorough. We were at a very well regarded clinic in the UK but we've had far more testing done at Tambre. It feels like Tambre are taking the time to properly evaluate our case before our treatment starts, which will hopefully give us better chances of success. When we went for our initial tests, the Dr also gave me my prescriptions and said that I could buy my medications from a pharmacy a stone's throw away from the clinic, which we did as the medications are cheaper in Spain. We had no issues flying back to UK with needles, syringes & medications.
I don't have any experience with IVF Spain, but we also had a consultation with IVI Madrid and were way more impressed with Tambre so we decided to go with them.
Happy to answer any further questions on our experience with Clinica Tambre to date if that would be helpful.

[Nessylink]

@CentaurChiron, Thank you so much for the quick response and telling how your visit with Tambre went! Apparently we are meeting with Dr Santiago while we are there. They sound amazing for sure - the coordinator actually booked me in for a mammogram (i'm over 40) in a nearby clinic because they do not offer that test themselves! The only thing I'm a bit hesitant on is that I think they will want 50% payment at our visit and I just don't want to be put on the spot. I'd prefer to sleep on it and discuss with my husband how he felt about our experience before signing everything. Hoping we can talk them into letting us digest everything first. But I'm really looking forward to our visit there now thanks to your raving review :)
Best of luck with everything xx

[CentaurChiron]

@Nessylink you don't have to pay 50% on your first visit I don't think. We didn't have to, but we did pay the 50% around the time of our second results consultation about 3 weeks after our visit. You will of course have to pay for any tests you have done there on the day. You can also take the IVF consent forms home with you to sign if you want to (if you decide to go with them). We did have to sign a couple of forms there but that was more in relation to the tests we were having than signing a contract to have treatment with them. I hope that's helpful.
Best of luck to you too with everything Xx

[Mummmmyyyy]

Hi everyone,

i hope you don’t mind me joining the conversation…

I have a consultation booked with clinica tambre in June.. I just wanted to know anyones experience with the clinic,

also they mentioned double stimulation as an option, has anyone had this?

I will obviously discuss everything in my consultation,

thanks!

[ArtyCubbles]

Hello to all you prospective mums to be or second/third time mums to be! I am struggling just to pick a clinic and it has me not moving forward and time is running out for me. I’m 49! The ones I’ve homed in on are Clinic Tambre (Madrid), Institatuto Barnebeau (Alicante), Newlife (Greece) and possibly Barcelona IVF. Has anyone had successes or not been successful at these clinics? Any recommendations or advice gratefully received!! X