ABC IVF

[Hoping43]

Hi

does anyone have any experience/info with ABC IVF? Particularly Leeds or Manchester?

Is ABC classes as mild IVF? I’ve read that the success rates are low with mild IVF so it can take a lot more rounds to get success so although the cost saving is appealing, I’m not sure if it work would out so beneficial in the end.

also, does anyone know what happens if you don’t respond to their “standard” drugs protocol? Would it ever be increased in line with conventional IVF?

thanks so much in advance!

Hi, we looked into this as it was a lot cheaper. Went to the initial consultation and had the scan/semen analysis done. They were lovely and did spend a lot of time with us, but there were several different things we were told which didn’t sound quite right to us (we are doctors in totally unrelated specialties but had read up a lot on ivf). Their free virtual information evening also rang a few alarm bells for us as we felt the prof who gave the talk was overselling certain aspects. Therefore, before we went ahead we booked a private consultation with a consultant at my own hospital who I knew to be very well regarded in the fertility world. He rolled his eyes when I told them what we had been told at abc, and disagreed with a lot of their advice - and the things that didn’t sound right to us weren’t right.

He also explained that the mild IVF is basically just a different business model. Although it’s cheaper, if it is not successful on first attempt, you will probably not have any remaining embryos or perhaps only have one frozen one to use. So then you essentially have to keep paying the same price over and over again until you are successful. In comparison to standard IVF, where you would expect to get more embryos, and then just have repeated frozen embryo transfers until one is successful.

He also said that there wasn’t much evidence for mild IVF, and to be honest from our extensive reading of the medical literature we were starting to realise this for ourselves.

He recommended that we sought treatment at an nhs unit, as there would be good evidence base for their practice and also likely to be a bit cheaper than private clinics. Plus better to be on an nhs site when undergoing egg collection so that you know you are getting a proper anaesthetist and there would be proper medical backup if needed.

We are actually about to start IVF at Kings privately - so far so good. It’s looking like it will cost about 5k all in including drugs (though we had the initial scan/some of the bloods/initial consultation on the NHS - we decided to switch to private as we are impatient!).

Good luck! Xx

Also - this was ABC Wimbledon - forgot to mention.

If mild ivf isn’t working for you they cannot move to conventional ivf as the clinic doesn’t do it (abc is nurse run - though I think the actual egg collection is done by a doctor).

Hi @TheKitchenSinkkk thank you for getting back to me. Yes, I had started to realise that the initial cost was low but that it would soon add if with any FETs and that it could take many more rounds to get success. Also, I have been on letrozole and haven’t responded to it, which may have no relevance but also makes me think that perhaps mild IVF won’t be right for me.

in terms of NHS, our local NHS provider is just a satellite clinic so we would have to go to a private clinic for egg collection. We have the choice of one with an anaesthetist or not but I’m guessing your have been told it’s safer to go with the the anaesthetist.

the other thing with NHS based is that I don’t think they seem to do any kind of multi cycle packages and because they seem to include unlimited FETs, it seems a package could keep the cost down if not successful initially?

Hi @Hoping43 , just to give you another perspective on ABC iVF, but the St. Paul's branch. I am not medically trained so this was just my own experience as a patient and obviously everyone's experience will be different.

I was very happy with the treatment I received with ABC. The drugs schedule with mild IVF was a breeze in comparison to one of my friends who was getting long protocol on the NHS as the same time, but thankfully I did react well to the drugs. I didn't need any time off work. They can up your dose of the drug if you aren't responding to the initial dose and it was a doctor doing all of my egg monitoring scans.
8 mature eggs were retrieved and all fertilised, 5 making it to day 5. The process was far more straight forward than I expected.

I had the best quality egg transferred and the rest popped into the freezer, and we were very very lucky that the first transfer worked and I am now 33 weeks pregnant. This is maybe very naive given our first transfer worked but at the moment we are blissfully of the mindset that we have more than enough good quality embryos in the freezer as only want one more child (if not, we will cross that stress when we come to it).

Had I know how stress free the process would be for me, I would not have been so worked up about our decision to go down the IVF route before, and I'm so glad we chose the clinic we did. The IVF process was only a fraction of the stress of TTC in my experience.

Then again £5k all in at kings which @TheKitchenSinkkk mentioned also sounds great value, all the clinics we looked at were nearer 10 all in.

Wishing you both the best of luck in your treatment!

thank you @Babyenroute may I ask how old you are?

im just not sure. I feel like I need to have no regrets and I worry if we spend our money there and it doesn’t work, I’ll regret not going down the conventional route and we won’t have any money left to spend as we already have two children (conceived naturally btw!!) xx

@Hoping43 Both DH and I are 32. Should have said, we did ICSI rather than conventional IVF as DHs sperm analysis wasn't great, and in hindsight, I think that's why the non ABC routes were going to be so much more.

@Hoping43 I don’t think no anaesthetist is a good idea. To get decent sedation, you’d want to be on doses of the drugs or types of drugs that should really be administered by an anaesthetist. Note that sedation does not mean you are completely asleep, but you are very sleepy and probably won’t remember anything afterwards.

It’s not just about the pain (though of course you don’t want to make an already stressful process traumatic!), It is also about the fact that you don’t really want to be tensing up/moving around when they are trying to collect the eggs. Really you want their job to be as easy as possible, to give yourself the best chances of as many eggs as possible.

I had a little Google around and it looks like St Mary’s in Manchester do private IVF at a good price - actually a bit cheaper than kings. I know a friend of mine (also a doctor!) had successful NHS IVF with them and was very happy with the care and service. Here is the price list - mft.nhs.uk/app/uploads/2022/07/Price-List-April-2022.pdf