I am looking for a good IVF Clinic in London and my experience at CRGH

[stayhealthyandpositive]

Hi all,

I hope you are well and stay safe.

I am a healthy woman, with no fertility issues and healthy egg reserve. (I've done a lot of screening tests) My husband has borderline quality sperm for his last sperm DNA fragmentation test.

We did two cycles at CRGH. Total 25 eggs and only one healthy embryo past PGS.

Put aside the result, I am a bit disappointed with the experience there. I am not sure if it is because of the pandemic, I choose one of their best consultant A (I wont name here) and thought I would be guided and treated by him.

I had a phone consultation with him and started the treatment plan. During the entire process, he has a team of consultants to review my scan and situation. On the egg collection day, despited the fact I requested him to do it for me, he didn't come and his consultant did it for me.

Overall, you don't get a personal touch with the team there. As a matter of fact, you dont even know who is making the decision to adjust the medicines during the process. it is whoever on duty that day. I feel that they are running the clinic like a production line.

IVF is expensive and I did some research choosing this consultant but in the end, I dont think he is involved in all the steps of my treatment. He is more like a CEO in a company, who set an overarching guideline but not doing the actual job.

IVF is a challenging process for us, both physically and mentally, thus, I find CRGH is a bit impersonal. It is extremely difficult to get hold of your consultant. Unusually, you wont get to talk with your consultants but their nurses. The nurse will pass along the message and call you back later. Sometimes they forgot too, so you need to call back.

If you are a bit of medical nerd and thorough person like me, CRGH is definitely not your choice!

I wonder if any one could share their experience with their IVF clinic in London. I am looking for a recommendation. Thanks a lot! Good luck with everyone!

I’m afraid I’m on my 3rd IVF clinic and heading for my 5th round of IVF soon and have had the same experience as you above in each one. The consultants sometimes do egg collection sometimes don’t.

For me the most important thing about a consultant is their proactivity and ingenuity about treatment plans and protocols. Maybe others can advise otherwise but I don’t think many have experienced closeness to their consultant in any of the big successful clinics. Usually it is that your consultant does your protocol and review and takes any serious queries but nurses and others do scans, phone calls, follows ups and advise you of egg collection etc. I should add I think sometimes it’s better to have a doctor who is doing egg collections all day collect the eggs than a consultant who does the odd one as the more experienced you are at the process the better able they’re likely to be to get the eggs out.

@FitzsimmonsMarvel Thank you so much for your thoughtful email. I really appreciate your feedback. I will speak with my consultant about my recent cycle.

Have you tried mild IVF? I listened to a talk from create fertility clinic and i understand that it is mainly a marketing promotion to get customers, but the doctor there presented data showing that mild IVF can be just as effective as regular IVF.

@stayhealthyandpositive I did a consultation with Create, Lister and ARGC before deciding on Lister. Create said their mild was 150 bemfola as they said I wasn’t a candidate for the proper mild ivf that some people do here. Lister proposed to build on a previous protocol Ive done of max menopur by adding letrozole and they’ve said they also do mild ivf so I can swap to that without having to move clinics if I want later on.

I think for clinics it’s important to get a feel by doing consultations. Lister fit our criteria for our issues and their response and we’re very happy with them but I can’t recommend them on the basis of the personalised care you want. I think that it will be difficult to come by but it’s worth doing some consults to ask if that’s number one for you. Maybe someone will be along to recommend where they got that kind of care too so it’s worth waiting to see. I also find with different clinics people tend to really rave about them if they’ve gotten pregnant but realistically that’s skewing their views!

I did 5 rounds with Create - 2x mild and 3x natural modified - I had twins last week from the embryo banking I did on the 3 rounds of natural modified and have 2 more top quality embryos frozen (not PGS tested)

I think perhaps your expectations of having one consultant giving you a personal experience is way off - I don't know any clinics that offer you that. It's always a case of initial consultation with the Consultant and then scans, egg collection, transfer will be with whoever is available. The protocol/drug regimen is still discussed and signed off with the main consultant though

doctor there presented data showing that mild IVF can be just as effective as regular IVF.

My egg quality was found to be surprisingly rubbish for my age (36) even when doing mild IVF. (I was on 225ml Bemfola due to AMH level). Over 2 rounds I collected 28 eggs. Less than 30% fertilised with ICSI, 4 average quality blastocysts, PGS tested 2 and neither normal. 3 transfers all BFN

I then pushed to change to natural modified IVF - 150ml Bemfola every OTHER day and daily tamoxifen tablets. Whole process over in about 9 days. In 2 cycles I collected 9 eggs, 100% fertilised with ICSI and 4 top quality blastocysts (2 of which are my twins).

So for me the milder the protocol the better my results. But it was a gamble and may not work for everyone

I do think you will find that most clinics will work in a similar way, if it's a clinic with multiple consultants you will find they will cover theatre on a rota basis as it's hard to determine who will be ready for egg collection and when, some people get lucky and get their consultants and others their egg collection falls on their Doctors day off or on a day they are in consultations with other patients.

It works the same way for reviewing your response to stimulation- they will likely have a Doctor on duty who will review your notes with a team of other people and a decision is made to amend/prepare for egg collection etc, again this may be your Doctor or if your Doctor is in theatre it may be a colleague. I do think if this is something you wouldn't be happy with then speak to a lot of clinics and get their set up clarified

I wasn’t thrilled by CRGH either. They didn’t delve into things properly or think outside the box much. I had to do a lot of thinking which is frustrating when they are paid so much. I’m now looking further afield then London, if we do another round

Yes it’s hard to know how it will work for you until you try. I was the opposite to @ivfbeenbusy my 1st and 2nd rounds were low dose gonal f and got nowhere with no embryos. 3rd and 4th round went onto max Menopur and from those 2 rounds got 5 top quality (3AA, x3 4AA, 5AA) blasts (morphology wise not PGS wise). So for me upping the meds made the difference.

Again it could be worth doing several consults as based on my notes create said they wouldn’t recommend the protocol they did for @ivfbeenbusy

@ivfbeenbusy huge congrats on the twins! I have been chatting to you under different usernames here before. Boy/Girl? Names? You must be so thrilled with your family of 3. It’s the absolute dream when you need IVF.

@ivfbeenbusy Congratulations on the twins! Wonderful! You are super brave to take on twins! :)

@FitzsimmonsMarvel@WhatKatyDidNxt

I wonder why CRGH are using different stimulation drugs from what you mentioned. Most of my friends had gonal F and menopur but CRGH gave me Merifofert, Fostimon and zomacton.

Funny that you mentioned your egg quality in rating. I specifically asked the embryologists what is the rating for my embryos. AA, BB...or whatever...They told me that they dont do that. They just classify excellent quality, good quality, average and poor....

Anyway, I will not recommend CRGH. Best of luck for everyone on this challenging but yet rewarding journey (praying)!

I was on fostimon and meriofert as well. We never got a real answer about our issues, apart from one or both of us has issues. Errr l think that’s kind of obvious, we had worked that out for ourselves some time ago We got CRGH via NHS as in our local area doesn’t do IVF themselves.

Hello lovely! @stayhealthyandpositive, I've come across your post going through CRGH-related comments. We seem to have a similar history of trying for a baby - I'm 38yo,ttc for 3 yrs, no known fertility issues, AMH 16, AFC 18, hubby good sperm quality and number. We had a negative result at Lister last year, no blasto, so exploring CRGH for the second round of IVF. I had a few consultations with them, was put on the same stimms like you meriofert, fostimon, growth hormone, gonasi and to time my period norethisterone -despite the fact that it's like on the dot every single month! I know that they have high success rates buuuuut my experience so far has not been great, like they dont explain you the decisions they make. I'm not sure if I want to go ahead with them or go to another clinic. May I ask how your experience was? I'd be grateful for your feedback.
Wishing you all the best in your baby journey

@GreenMerlin - I know your message wasn’t directed to me, but I wanted to share that I had a consultation and initial discussions with CRGH - they wanted me on a protocol that involved stopping and controlling my periods even though my periods are completely regular and this had never been an issue for me in previous rounds. I challenged it and the nurse just said I could decide not to have that part if I didn’t want to. It left me feeling quite confused! I didn’t go with them in the end (variety of reasons) but I just wanted to share that I think this must be their standard approach regardless of regular periods.