Fertility treatment NHS v private

[Nk11]

Partner (m 32) and I (f 30) been TTC 4 years. Discovered male infertility factor low on all areas. My cycles are like clockwork and bloods came back good. Had a referral to fertility clinic (Yorkshire) and first appointment today 2 weeks post referral. This was for paperwork interview and trans vaginal scan which the nurse said showed normal. Unfortunately been told minimum 8 week wait now to see a consultant and no time frame given by nurse on treatment times. Concerned about what timescale might be given by consultant before we can start treatment was hoping for ICSI and with no female fertility issue and both having healthy BMI should there be any other treatments recommended before IVF? Is it worth waiting or should we go private? I would prefer minimal stimulation and Create Leeds offer a mild ivf approach but obviously comes at a price. We could get going privately in a matter of weeks. They have said I would need an internal scan and virtual consultation first. Should the NHS scan be released to me so I don’t need to have another done privately? Does anyone have a similar experience?

Hi @Nk11 I’m with Leeds, if you are in Leeds CCG going private will invalidate your NHS round (not sure if you are aware of this).

We’ve gone NHS, it has taken a long time because of COVID (it took 7 months for our referral to go through), I had a polyp that needed removing (2x ops) and then we paused it for 6 months.

Im doing IVF now on the NHS and don’t really appear to have a waiting list - the nurse I spoke to on Monday said they were doing referrals as soon as they came in (which appears to be right if you only waited 2 weeks).

The treatment from Create is exactly the same whether you are private or NHS. Personally if you can afford a private round Id save this for after the NHS round (but you might want to check whether it would be any quicker - we were told once we had our first appointment the timings were identical).

Other than my polyp, DH had low morphology (1%), he has worked really hard and has got this up to 8%, and improved other factors too. He wasn’t overweight and didn’t smoke and only drank occasionally so we were surprised that it was so low and that it could improve so much. He was a fan of hot baths - so these went, he always did a reasonable amount of exercise but started training for a marathon so was doing a lot more exercise, the only other thing he did was cut out caffeine (he already took vitamins). Your DH has probably tried most of these but thought I’d mention it in case it helps.

Hi thank you for your reply. We’re referred to Yorkshire Fertility in Halifax but my partner had a private SA at Create Leeds and I prefer their approach towards more natural IVF or just the mild version. I’m just concerned that if I wait another 8 weeks for the consultant appointment there will then be more waiting time after this if for example they don’t want to start ivf straight away. Like you have mentioned will they suggest we try things to improve the sperm quality first. My partner is a healthy bmi doesn’t smoke or drink (apart from the odd few pints after football) he does drink coffee and likes a hot bath but I’d hate if they said to wait another 3 months. They have said they need him to do another SA which will take 8 weeks! I said will it make much difference as low in all three areas (6 million/ml, morph was at 2% and I think motility around 30% low anyway). I really don’t want to delay and I think we are only looking at funding for 1 cycle in our area. The other issue was I felt like I wasn’t given much of a plan and when I was taken for the internal scan, the room hadn’t been cleaned up after the last person and there were still scan images on screen. I can’t help but feel I would have a better experience if we paid for it. I’ve seen Create do a 3 cycle plan where there is a significant discount if you need all 3 cycles. I will enquire with Create how soon we could get going with it.