Embryoscope - what are your thoughts?

[organicapricot]

Starting first round of IVF next month, today the clinic spoke to us about the embryoscope. I want to do everything I can to make this work but feel that I might pin even more hope on it if we did that and be even more gutted if it didn't work. But at least I'd know we did what we could. Has anyone done this? Was it a success? Or not done it and what were reasons for that?

I asked about this in our injection training with the senior nurse and asked for her honest opinion - she said that not enough research has been done on the EmbryoScope to cement that it makes any real difference/adds anything to treatment so we decided not to spend £350 on something which wasn’t proven.

Thanks justwaiting. It's all so hard isn't it with the 'extras' they chuck in and then you're just left thinking should I do it. I agree from what I've read about it, doesn't seem to be a huge sample size.

We used it. It was £700 at my clinic!! Gr. we knew it was likely I'd have a lot of eggs and we got 18 in the end with 13 fertilising (only 12 could be put in the embryoscope). I wanted them to be able to see if the progress throughout was as it should be instead of only when they removed them from incubation to check. Also, I didn't want the embryos to be disturbed by removing them from incubation.

I also had a three cycle plan about what I was going to throw at each round. Acupuncture (every day during stims) and embryoscope were the things for cycle one. I felt like it was my way of supplementing our one nhs round..? If that makes sense!?

I'll never know if it made a difference, but I've got a bun in the oven and three in the freezer.

I am using it on my cycle, but my clinic includes it for free in the price, so I don't have to pay extra for it.

As it monitors the embryos in situ, apparently they can watch the development better to check on quality, but they don't then have to keep taking them in and out of the incubator to check so they can stay at a constant temperature which is meant to be better.

I am not sure whether it will make a difference and it is included for me anyway so that's a bonus. If it wasn't, I think I would be tempted too (more with this than a lot of the other extras) but it would depend on the price - if it was a couple of hundred I would but if it was £700 I think I would pass.

Thanks for your replies. Congrats physicskate, that's awesome news! It is £600 for us to do it. We are nhs funded but only get the one nhs try where I live. I'm leaning towards doing it as I am hopeful I'll have lots of eggs as my reserves are good.
Good luck to everyone x

Our consultant recommended we have embryoscope on our next cycle as our embryo quality wasn't great last time. He said the latest research is showing that it can make a difference to quality due to not disturbing them. It's only (only!) £350 at our clinic so we'll be including it with our next round. I definitely didn't feel like he was pushing add ons for the sake of it and he seemed to think it could help in our situation. I would also be interested to hear others' experience of it!