Genetic Testing

[lou12208]

Hi reader,

Have you thought about or gone through the process of testing your embryos?

Have you had a back to back egg collection?

Time is against me I'm 42 this is my last shot, needing advice to the above questions. Would really appreciate your feedback. xxx

[MissSaoPaulo]

Hi hon,Also 42. In answer to your questions: on our first attempt at IVF, age 38/39, we ruled out testing because of the expense. We got 5 blastocysts but only 1 was a viable pregnancy so testing would have saved money and heartache in the long run. We then tried again last year around the time I turned 42. We actually did a protocol called Duostim (two rounds of stimulation in the same menstrual cycle, so a little more intense than back to back - I wrote a whole post about it at the time, if you're interested in the details). We agreed with our clinic that if we got 3 or more embryos we would test them. We ended up with 2 blastocysts so we decided just to transfer them and wait and see but unfortunately it was unsuccessful.

So in my experience, it's worth testing if you have maybe more than 3 embryos as it will save money not transferring unviable embies but if you only have one or two I would just get them back where they belong and hope for the best

Good luck xxx

[lou12208 in reply to MissSaoPaulo]

Wow! I've not heard of that protocol it sounds brutal. Well done you, strong lady! Thank you for sharing and your advice. xx

[Hidden]

I was told to only test embryos if you have loads as it’s not necessarily conclusive and risks your embryos being damaged so you need to have enough that it doesn’t matter if you lose some x

[Ranchu90]

I tested my embryos because of 2 chemicals (at that time)- 3 chemical pregnancy in total, it was the best decision we ever made. We didn't produce many embryos in our first 2 cycle (before PGS testing) just 1 per cycle but I decided to take a risk and unfortunately our 3rd cycle also produced one blast and I still didn't give up on testing my embryos so we decided last minute that we will do embryo banking. Because of covid our back to back cycle was cancelled so we did the 4th cycle later one. On our last try we produced 4 blasts, for the first time in our history. We had 5 in total to test, 3 came back normal, 1 mosaic and 1 abnormal. We have twin from my last 2 normal embryos, nothing more left to transfer and my family is complete with a boy and a girl. I hope you will take the right decision, good luck in this incredible hard journey.

[pink_lemon]

I agree with the above posters. We tested even just the 3 blasts we had to avoid further misscarriages of cromosomally abnormal pregnancies. It also made financial sense for us. Depending on your conditions, if you are doing only one round and would not have many embryos, just transferring might work better as in some cases even abnormal embryos can correct. If you have several embryos, testung can chose the most viable ones to increase your chances of viable pregnancy. It is a complex choice. Best of luck and lots of baby dust. xox

[MagicTourmaline in reply to pink_lemon]

Hi, what do you mean by abnormal embrios can correct?

[pink_lemon in reply to MagicTourmaline]

There is research and stats that many mosaic embryos (with only some cells testing abnormal) correct themselves as they grow and healthy babies are born from them. There were also cases where abnormal embryos were transferred resulting in healthy babies - though probably this is more rare. I will try to find the links for you.

[McQueeny]

It’s a very complex topic. While I completely respect the experiences of all those who have tested and didn’t waste time on abnormal embryos, there is also some evidence of embryos being discarded that would have been completely viable (serious abnormality wouldn’t implant / miscarry early, but some low level abnormalities correct themselves, and the tests don’t differentiate between those). We never tested our embryos as we only ever had 2-3 blasts from each cycle - we do have one little boy now and just tested positive from our recent FET - I personally decided that if we end up with another egg collection I wouldn’t test and just take my chances with a transfer. But it’s a really personal decision.

Good luck!! 🍀🤞💪

[Anisha29]

I got my embryos tested from 3 cycles. We managed to collect 7 embryos in total from stimulation. I got these 7 tested as I'm 41 so time is also ticking. Out of the 7, 4 embryos did not make it to day 5. From the 3 left, we got them PGS tested. 2 came back normal. One had a extra chromosome.

I think testing is worth it if you have the money.

[MofM]

This is a very tricky question.

I am 38 yo with low ovarian reserve, my partner has very high DNA fragmentation and before starting our 3 back to back cycles we had transferred 8 embryos, resulting from 3 IVF cycles, with no success (1 miscarriage, 1 CP, 6 failures).

We were against testing our embryos. I spend some time reading the most recent literature and it seems PGT-A discards many embryos that are perfectly viable due to the fact that a) we don't understand how the underlying biology of self-correcting embryos/different chromosomal makeup for the trophoblast works, b) the technique used doesn't sample enough cells to discriminate well between abnormal and mosaics and between degrees of mosaicism (but sampling more cells will kill the embryo).

Indeed, in the US, where they transfer also abnormal embryos they still get perfectly viable pregnancies from them, and my clinic, in my age range, has better success rates with non-tested embryos than tested embryos (30 vs 20%), as I discovered after a long chat with a senior embryologist who was meant to convince me that PGT-A is the best approach

We already produce very few embryos (4 from our 3 back to back) so we did not want to waste any with PGT-A.

If you look at my recent replies I created a list of papers supporting these views.

xxx