Hi ladies,
I'm now in my 2ww. Already losing hope though. :/
I had two previous egg collections before and this was our third. The last two we did IVF, this time IMSI. And this time the fertilization outcome is way worse.
Does IMSI or icsi have this sort of risk?
Hi there, sorry about your fertilisation outcome.My understanding is that ICSI/IMSI generally improves the fertilisation rates for male factor fertility..
I think it is worth checking with your clinic why you had worse outcome with IMSI.
All the best with your 2 week wait🙏🏾
Thank you!
You’re welcome. Did you speak to your clinic?
I hope you are doing okay. I know how stressful the 2WW can be.
Thanks. Not too informative. The embryologist said it can happen..
This is not helpful and it is clear that something went wrong clearly. Having read your posts below, it is disheartening to be given an add on, pay for it and for your outcome to be worse!
I think ICSI/ IMSI should only be recommended if absolutely necessary. My husband had a vasectomy so we had no choice but go down the ICSI route.
When I was researching clinics for my current cycle, I personally preferred clinics that did not push add ons.
I hope you get the answers to the poorer outcome.
I think you meant to reply to the lady below zebedee1971. We had the sperm frag. Issue which we got to know recently. Just that without IMSI previously, both times our fertilization was 100 percent.
Do you know why they would recommend or do IMSI if you had 100% fertilisation in the first place?
So after multiple implantation failures we wanted to do some tests and we decided to do dna frag. And it came out quite badly. They said even icsi wont be good. Imsi better. bad sperms and also bad eggs can be fertilized. For us it was not just 100 percent fertilization. The numbers that made it to day 5 were dropped... This infertility journey is killing. The big factor of unknown. I dont think my current cycle worked. I regret I didnt do other tests which my doctor was not so enthusiastic about saying not enough evidence...Anyways. That is our story.. 
I certainly get what you talking about. This journey really is not at all easy and I wish the experts would be more honest about a lot of it not being within their control.
After a failed cycle, I have learned to trust my gut more and be more vocal about the things I don’t agree with.
I really hope you get those answers!
I agree with what joyful star has said - we had ICSI due to the morphology of my husbands sample (the shapes basically) - he’s older at 59 now.
IMSI I understand is just a more powerful lense on the microscope they use, so they will still do ICSI.
My fertilisation rates weren’t bad, 21 collected in the first round 17 mature and fertilised. The second round 12 collected 10 matured and fertilised.
That’s all well and good, after 5 days we were left with 2 and 3 respectively - which really is nothing!!
I hasten to add we had a MC from our first go, the second didn’t implant. The second round I started bleeding before test day and the other two we had PGTA tested and found were chromosomally abnormal.
Our third round my sister who’s 30 donated to us (I’m 41 now) she had 24 collected I think it was 19 were nature and fertilised. By day 5 we were left with 3, again not brilliant - but the first one we had put back I’ll be 11 weeks tomorrow - not out of the danger zone yet and certainly not a time to relax, celebrate etc until we are certain all is good and in the homeward straight
I just learned something new. I know IMSI was a variation of ICSI but just learned about the microscope.
Fantastic fertilisation rates by the way. I have had mixed fortunes with ICSI.
Round 1: 7 eggs collected, 5 mature, 4 out of 5 fertilised and I embryo made it to day 5
Round 2: 6 eggs collected, 4 mature. 4 out of 4 fertilised and 2 made it to day 5
Round 3: 13 eggs collected, 9 mature, 5 out of 9 fertilised and no blastocysts
It is amazing how the numbers dwindle even when you have lots.
All the best with the pregnancy. 🙏🏾
We were told to go for ICSI or IMSI because of our poor fertilisation rate on IVF (only 3 out of 10 eggs fertilised - they seemed to think it was a egg/sperm binding issue). We went for IMSI and had 13 out of 15 eggs fertilised.
Not sure why IMSI would lead to worst result than IVF - I do vaguely remember reading that with ICSI (and therefore IMSI) there is a risk of damage to the eggs. Did you discuss with your consultant?
Good luck with the 2ww.
Thanks. Not yet with the consultant. But when I brought it up the embryologist said it can happen. 🙄
You were right that there is a risk of damage to eggs..
Hey, I’m not sure how accurate this is but vaguely remember from my own cycles. Fertilisation rate for us was lower with Imsi than icsi.
We went to a very busy clinic that did around 30 egg collections in one day, I remember the consultant saying if we wanted imsi we would have to plan the cycle accordingly because they could only have 3/4 people doing it on a given day as the process is much more time consuming than icsi (because the magnification is higher it’ll take longer to look through the sperm sample). I’m not sure if this added delay led to a lower fertilisation rate but might be worth asking about.
It turns out IMSI while injecting sperms can damage eggs. I guess that is the same for icsi?
I am updating this here for someone else who might look for info.So I got to learn that IMSI can lower fertilization yes. I think it is the same with icsi. One reason is that it can damage eggs.
My wife had icsi for her egg retrieval this month. Out of 22 eggs, 18 fertilized. It didn't seem to damage any of the eggs either. I haven't heard that before xx
Maybe your wife eggs are very strong 
congrats. 18 out of 22 that is amazing. In our case also the number of embryos making it to day 5 dropped a lot. But like I said who knows. Quality matters. Not numbers.I heard it from the clinic and it turns out in the info page with the risk section they also wrote it.. which I did not carefully read
I wonder if it also depends on the skill of the embryologist - or whoever is doing the injecting.
Ha. I actually that has crossed my mind too... :/
Personally, for me it didn't work....On our nhs cycle I had 15 out of 18 fertilise... Ended up with two poor/average.
On my private imsi cycle, only 8 fertilised out of 15, ended up with two again but both came back pgs abnormal.
We didn't need imsi as my partner doesn't have any issues (it's me with the problems!) but the private clinic pushed for it. We felt like we wasted a lot of money on that cycle. I have heard it damages the sperm and my experience would back that up. I do wonder what would have happened had we let them fertilise normally.....
Sorry to hear that. Usually they dont push IMSI unless there is dna frag. Issue wit sperms.... 😔
Yep we were surprised too, but the clinic had really good results and we wanted to throw everything at that cycle, hoping it would give us the best chance.
Icsi
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ICSI 
