PGTA Testing - Help!

[H0pefull]

Hello!

Apologies if this isn’t the right place to post this but I am after some opinions please. My husband and I are due to start IVF in the coming months, at a private clinic that we are lucky enough to have covered via my private healthcare at work. (CARE Fertility for anybody UK based.)

Here is our background for context:
I am 28, husband is 33.
First loss in 2022, no further pregnancies despite trying until January & September of this year, both losses.
I have endometriosis and adenomyosis, I had excision surgery around this time last year.

We are being offered PGTA testing as part of our treatment and we are having a difficult time deciding whether to go ahead with it or not. I know there is a lot of for and against, it is also a huge added cost. (Our fertility benefit through work is capped at 20K, just for further context)

I would appreciate any opinions on whether or not to go ahead with it, or just move forward with IVF without PGTA.

thank you in advance!!

I voted yes and I did PGT-A testing myself, I can set out my reasons why in case it helps. It’s obviously a really personal choice. I also had endometriosis which I had surgically removed too before my retrieval and transfer.

If you’re considering cost as the main factor, there’s an argument that it actually saves you money in the longer run. At my clinic PGT-A was £300 per embryo, which on the scale of IVF Monopoly money is one of the lower costing items. The FET costs were more than x10 higher than that. I wouldn’t want to incur all of the costs of multiple failed transfers of abnormal embryos (let alone the upset of it)

I also had a miscarriage that I had really struggled with before IVF and I wanted to do what I could to minimise the chances of that happening again (really sorry to hear that you’ve had three ❤️‍🩹). My consultant advised PGT-A as being the best way to “optimise outcomes”. I also thought if a transfer failed we would at least know it wasnt due to the embryo being abnormal / we could at least rule that out as a cause.

I had ovarian endometriosis and was worried about what my egg quality would be like too so I felt reassured by having access to more information. My egg retrieval was 3 weeks after my surgery and I was anxious my eggs hadn’t had very long to develop in a lower inflammatory environment

as mentioned though it’s really personal and lots of people don’t. A friend of mine (who also has endometriosis) didn’t want to do testing because from her perspective it would be added heartbreak and disappointment if they were abnormal. As mentioned I really struggled after my miscarriage and would have found abnormal PGT-A results less upsetting than a miscarriage. My friend’s third transfer stuck, but there’s no way of knowing whether the first two didn’t take because they were abnormal or if there was another reason

I had my first FET in June and it stuck 🙏🏻. If I hadn’t though I wouldn’t have regretted doing the testing

Wishing you all the best ✨💫

I would given the lossess, as it might help understand more whats going on for you.

My understanding from my fertility specialist was that it is more useful in older mothers, or those with lots of miscarriages previously, and the outcomes aren’t hugely different in younger women like yourself x

Im for testing embryos but as long as you understand that even with a good embryo it doesnt mean it will make a baby. Not all embryos good or bad are meant to create life. Also you have to understand that the sample that is tested is so microscopic that its not 100% accurate and sometimes you can lose good embryos because a tiny parcel was absnormal but in fact the embryo was fine for transfer and in many cases these embryos arnt kept. Also not all embryos you create will survive the testing period so could lose embryos that way also that could have been good for transfer. Testing embryos is still so new that there are no guarantees. In saying all of that, if you have had recurring miscarriages and not had the tissue tested so no answers to why you had those losses, testing the embryos you make via ivf can tell you whether your having issues with embryo health and if you transfer numerous healthy embryo and it not work then there could be other issues to do with uterine environment.