ABC - experiences of nurse-led IVF

[rihanna4]

Hello - can anybody share their experiences of nurse-led IVF at ABC? I'm nervous about not being under the care of a doctor. Thanks for any responses.

Hi. I was at abc in St Paul’s. The nurses scan you and can advise to a certain point. I was not a straight forward case so my issues were discussed amongst the consultants in their afternoon meeting and then the nurse would call with their advice. Happy to give more info if you need it

Thanks @Rubyroo1984 . Did you have a positive experience overall?

It’s mixed really. I went to them because I fit their criteria, thought I was straight forward case and the low price. We successfully made 13 embryos but after one failed attempt at a transfer I knew I needed to go to a different clinic. They have a mild approach to medication which suits some but not others. They don’t offer/believe in a lot of the add on’s. I think ABC is great if you are a simple case.

Thanks @Rubyroo1984 If you don't mind me asking, why did your failed transfer make you want to go to a different clinic? My understanding is that milder stims may reduce the number of eggs collected but shouldn't have any impact on embryo transfer. I might be wrong though.

I wasn’t feeling positive about the frozen embryo transfer because I wasn’t responding well to the estrogen. My lining failed to thicken and they didn’t have much to suggest, so felt a bit hopeless. Also on day of transfer there was a communication error and I was left in reception for 2 hours without an update as to why I hadn’t been called for my app. Very stressful. I assume this was a one off and one of those things but was icing on the cake. I wanted to go to a new clinic that would offer more to tests and try something else to help improve my chances.

@Rubyroo1984 Sorry to hear about your experience. I am worried about my uterus lining too but Create have told me it's fine as they use drugs to thicken it when the time comes. Glad to know now that it isn't that simple. Thanks for sharing

Ah it’s okay. Best of luck to you :-)

Depends on what you are looking for. I’ve spoken to fertility experts - essentially abc are just a different business model. They are much cheaper but you may only get one embryo and then you have to keep going through the entire egg collection thing again each time. Whereas conventional ivf will cost you more in the first instance, but then you are likely to get more embryos and just have to have frozen transfers. Frozen transfers involve much less medication and side effects, and much fewer appointments.

We were also given the wrong advice (fortunately we are doctors and sought an expert opinion as didn’t read right to us) - abc advised ISCI when wasn’t necessary and wasn’t best way forward for us. They were nice and most other things they said made sense. Ultimately we got lots of embryos from one egg collection paying privately in an nhs unit.

I guess if you are healthy and young it wouldn’t be a bad thing to go with them as you have higher likelihood of being successful first time and then would work out cheaper.

Thanks @TheKitchenSinkkk that's super helpful. I have read that milder IVF whilst resulting in fewer eggs can improve egg quality, whereas conventional IVF means more eggs but their quality may be impaired by the stimulation meds. This interests me as my FSH is high-ish.

But quantity of eggs is a big concern for me as I'm 39 and my ovarian reserve is what it is...

I've encountered a fair bit of chaos and lack of communication from Create/ABC thus far. However their success rates aren't bad.

Tbh (though I’m not a fertility specialist) if I had a high ish fsh and I was 39 I would just get on with conventional ivf, maybe even do a few stimulated cycles depending on how many blastocysts I got/how much money I had - so plenty in the freezer just in case fsh went higher. That will then buy you time. We are with kings and they have good success rates, you can start straight away with them privately with no waiting list. 3300 plus medication I think for an ivf cycle including fresh transfer. I’ve found them good - you see a different doctor each time (most not consultants, but the egg collection etc done by consultants), really good sedation by consultant anaesthetist for egg collection (feels like GA). They have a nurse/midwife led email advice service and usually get a response within hours if you email with a query.

@TheKitchenSinkkk thanks, I hadn't looked into Kings. Shall have a look.

@TheKitchenSinkkk Hi again - another question!...! You say that at King's you don't see the same doctor twice. Isn't that a bad thing? Were you constantly having to explain your background to each new doctor and worry that they weren't properly engaged in your case?

I think if you had a very complicated case then yes could be an issue, but most stuff is fairly protocolised and they have good success rates from their protocols.

My experience with Create is quite mixed. I think Abc is the same but a different name. In the beginning we had a horrible coordinator and things didn’t move until we requested to change to another one, when we got another one, she was lovely, and they have been impeccable. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t repeat mild IVF, ultimately it costed around 8k with everything and FET (not fresh) and I have no known fertility issues. We got a good amount of mature eggs and 8 fertilised (which is on the wide spectrum of mild IVF) but all arrested before day 5, so not quality over quantity in our case, we have a frozen day 3 that we will try, but we want to be realistic with our chances. Next time we might try conventional IVF at another clinic.

Also, my last scan and blood test were 3 days before egg retrieval, I found strange they wouldn’t scan on the most crucial days of the treatment, but perhaps this is common practice.

We had the last scan on a Monday and EG was on that Thursday.

Hi, just wanted to share a positive ABC results, I did my first treatment with them back in 2020 when I was 37. I will say their admin is really poor I had to keep chasing and chasing them the whole time tos start my treatment, but for the price I was willing to chase them many times more.
I did my whole treatment at the wimbledon branch and even though I did not see many doctors, on my EC and embryo transfer it was a doctor who did everything and it all went a little too well and we had identical twins.

We are going for a second try , this time FET, hopefully next month ( I'm 39 now) and again I had to chase them to do things, but good to know there is this King's place with resonable price just in case it doesn't work for us.

We fitted their criteria but only got one blastocyst out of 14 eggs and had a miscarriage so it definitely wasn’t a case of quality over quantity for us. I guess it was worth a shot but conventional IVF was more successful

Hi @summerpoolandsun, I had exactly the same numbers as you at abc, well the one they transferred had only actually made it to early blastocyst stage. Can I ask if you tried conventional IVF elsewhere and if so what were the results?

Hi @abbaroony yes we went for conventional IVF. I had 15 eggs and still only one blastocyst but the difference was there were 6 embryos still going strong at day 3 as opposed to only 1 at day 3 with mild IVF. So I feel that I never had much of a chance with the mild IVF. A key difference also was after our bad experience with a 4AA (my first cycle at ABC), we decided to PGTA test this embryo which was a 4BB and thankfully it’s normal. I’m currently 24 weeks pregnant 🤞