Anyone had success with PGS in IVF

[Hieveryone18]

Would like to know if anyone would recommend PGS testing with IVF and if it has been successful. Any information would be helpful as I am thinking of doing it next year. Has it made a great difference in your journey. Thank you

I did one cycle of IVF with PGS out of 5 rounds of IVF in total. I was age 36 and didn't get any "normal" embryos. I decided not to test again and am pregnant with twins from my next egg collection so I'm pretty sceptical of PGS now

I would only do it if I was over 40 and had 5 or more blastocysts to test and only intended on having one child as odds are you'd only get 1 normal

Cons

• need a good number of blastocysts - don't bother if don't get at least 5 to test
• abnormal embryos are not allowed to be transferred in the U.K. and have to be destroyed so you could end up with nothing to transfer
• the science is flawed - PGS was downgraded by the HFEA this year. They only take around 5 cells from a possible 100 from the outer layer which will eventually become the placenta so luck of the draw which 5 they pick - could be all abnormal or normal but had they picked a different 5 could have been a totally different outcome
• I've known people retest no result/abnormal embryos and the retest come back as normal
• PGS won't prevent a miscarriage if you have another underlying reason for infertility

I'm doing it for the reasons ivfbeenbusy has described - am 42 and currently embryo banking with PGS (there's a separate thread on this if you want to have a read) and feel that as i have no known fertility issues others than age, i hope it will reduce my risk of miscarriage.

I felt that if didn't do it, i could possibly fall pregnant and carry for the next 5 or 12+ weeks etc, then suffer a loss. At my age, losing possibly 3-4 months worth of time would impact on me quite a lot.

It's a gamble though and my clinic, Create, will only biopsy for PGS if embryos reach day 5/blastocyst. There is no evidence at all that testing at day 3 achieves anything, so i'm not sure if any clinic still does this. I think HEFA advised against it.

PGS is very common place in America, but here it's still quite unused and expensive. It has it's merits for some based on circumstance. For me it's a timing issue. If i was younger, i wouldn't do it.

@IslandStars

I did my PGS testing with create room x

*too

There is a thread here all about PGS. Most of the women got pregnant as a result
rollercoaster.ie/community/fertility-issues/pgs-ladies/

I am in favour of PGS based on my friends experience. One did 1st round IVF. Transferred one back, got pregnant but miscarried at 6 weeks. V upsetting and now been told she can’t do another FET until around April as her booofs are not normal again yet so that’s a 6 months wait after her miscarriage. My friend in the US did 1st round of IVF and PGS found 2 PGS normal and got pregnant and is now 12 weeks no issues.

I’m hoping it’ll mean less delays, less heartache of miscarriage and a quicker time to a baby. I’ve had immune and lining tests done too so hoping issues that cause miscarriage from them are also identified.

Thank you ladies it’s very interesting reading everyones thoughts

@Thenitbeginsagain please can tell me what booofs are please?

Sorry bloods!!!! Her bloods aren’t back to normal post miscarriage

@Thenitbeginsagain I was looking it up to find out what it means haha

Can I ask with PGS testing is it always then a frozen embryo transfer. Is it a round of ivf then they do the testing and freeze them. Or can it all be done in a fresh round too. Can’t find this information anywhere.

Always frozen transfer. At day 5 they biopsy the embryos then freeze until pgs results are back. I’ve not done PGS itself yet as I’m still banking embryos, but I think the results take 2-3 weeks on average.

Always frozen transfer which bumps up the cost as you effectively have to pay a Freeze all cycle, PGS, freeze and storage and then an FET

There are some clinics in Europe I believe can do it as a fresh transfer and turn around results in a couple of days - not sure how they manage it though!!

Create told me results can take up to 5 weeks - I was a nervous wreck - probably worse than the 5 day way to see what made it to blastocyst- I think in the end mine came back in about 3 weeks

@IslandStars thank you so in theory the next cycle after you should be able to go for the frozen embryo transfer if all ok

Thanks everyone just trying to get all the facts and lots of information

It’s always a FET but I’ve had two fresh transfers so far both negative so I’m happy enough to do FET as success rates are now the same as fresh and I think it’d be good for my body to recover from the meds as I always have awful bloating etc after egg collection.

There’s a lot of information in the thread I post above from Irish fertility issues site. If you read it start to finish you’ll get an idea for how many normals people were getting per round and how many ended up with success (pretty much all bar one if I recall correctly) also interesting to learn that embryo glue is not recommended with PGS FET as the embryo is hatching. There’s a girl posting there who has researched it very well so I’d recommend reading it. Also a woman who transferred back a mosaic and had a healthy baby

@ivfbeenbusy seen yours message to. It’s true that’s why I wanted to know because of how it will bump up the price. That side of it is always hush hush

@Hieveryone18 after egg collection, you’ll have a bleed around a week to 10 days later, then you can in theory start FET on your next cycle, providing results are back and your lining is ok etc.

[quote Hieveryone18]@ivfbeenbusy seen yours message to. It’s true that’s why I wanted to know because of how it will bump up the price. That side of it is always hush hush[/quote]

I always had Create do a draft cost before agreeing to a cycle so I didn't get any surprises - with the freeze all with support package /PGS/storage/FET/ Medication for FET I think our PGS cycle came to around £12k - compared to around £7.5k had we done a fresh cycle with no freezing and no PGS

@Thenitbeginsagain thank you for that information I will have a bedtime read of it all.

Hi - yes, we did PGS after two MMCs (same type each time). Consultant advised PGS as a result. The results came back as about 5 normal with the rest not in various ways. We had a lot of embryos to test. I have DCs now through transferring the normals.

Yes - I had unexplained recurrent miscarriage. Tested 6 blastocysts, 4 came back 'normal'. 3 are still frozen and one is 15 months old and sleeping in his pushchair. We are hoping to donate the remaining blasts.

It added to the cost but the emotional cost of 5 miscarriage dwarfs it in comparison :(

We had 5 embryos frozen from our first cycle so decided to test after the first transfer failed. We wanted to know that there was a better chance of the embryo being normal and it working. We tested 5 and 3 came back normal. We then did FET and it worked. Our little girl is 5 months old now. So l would definitely recommend the testing! It saved us more heart ache and extra transfers and we were successful! Good luck with it all!!

Thank you everyone for the information both for and against. So I had ivf and have a 4 year old lovely daughter, I became pregnant with her with a FET in this cycle. Done another round 2019 couldn’t do it sooner due to many reasons and the fresh embryo didn’t take. Finally went back after financial pressures due to covid recently and unfortunately ended in a miscarriage. I do have one more frozen embryo to try and I’m praying that will work if not I don’t know if I should go down the PGS route. The Doctors have been surprised when the fresh embryos didn’t take because they looked so good in both cycles. I never feel like my body is happy with the fresh embryo transfer (too much drugs and backwards and forwards to the clinic) but I’m always more relaxed with the FET, does anyone else feel like that or is it just me.