Egg Donation & Surrogacy Consulting : Conceptual Options : Theresa Erickson : Embryo Donation, In-Vitro Fertilization

Everyday we are making advances in technology in the world of Reproductive Assistance.  With all these advances, we are sure to have more effective options for infertile couples.

One of these new advances is The Invocell capsule.  Eggs and sperm are extracted in the same way as a standard treatment and as many as seven eggs are placed inside the capsule, along with the sperm.  The capsule is hem placed inside the woman's vagina to allow fertilization to occur inside the body.  After three days she would return to the clinic to have the capsule removed so that doctors could examine the embryos to see if any are of good quality to use.  The best two embryos would then be placed into the woman's uterus. 

BioXcell has completed 800 cycles in the UK using the capsule in a clinical trial and achieved a success rate of 19.7% in women under the age of 35.  The rate using standard IVF in the UK is 29.6% for women in the same age group.  While the capsule does not have as high of a success rate, it does show promise for the future.

There are certain parameters that this capsule can not fulfill:

• Needing to use ICSI for low sperm count
• The embryos can not be monitored during the early cell development
• Anyone wanting to freeze embryos to use as possible sibling for the first IVF baby or to try in subsequent cycles could not use this device

With new advances in technology, we are all being given new options in treatment. 

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Intended Parents often have questions about what happen if the first "fresh" attempt doesn't work.  Most of the time, the back-up plan is to use frozen embryos for subsequent cycles.  This is true whether the embryos are being placed in the Intended Mother or in a Surrogate.

The European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology has recently completed a study that indicates that children born from frozen embryos do better and have a higher birth weight than children born from a fresh transfer.

The study evaluated babies born during the years 1995 - 2006.  The study included 1,267 children born from Frozen Embryos and 17,857 babies born after normal IVF with fresh embryos.  The results of the study showed that children who came from frozen embryos had higher birth weights, longer pregnancies, and less pre-term births.  There was no difference int he rate of birth defects whether the children came from frozen embryos or fresh embryos. 

It is unclear why the frozen embryo children did better than their fresh embryo counterparts.  One suggestion is that "weaker embryos" may have been weeded out by the freeze thaw process, leaving only the healthiest embryos to produce a pregnancy. 

So if your initial attempt doesn't work, don't get discouraged.  There is proof that the frozen embryos have just as good of a chance of being the child you have always wanted.

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Researchers from Stanford University have developed a method they say can increase the ability to predict whether a woman will become pregnant through IVF.

The researchers found four of several factors already analyzed by doctors were critical in predicting IVF pregnancy: 

• The total number of emryos producted during the procedure
• The number of embryos that reach the eight-cell stage of development
• The number of embryos that stop dividing
• The woman's levels of a follicle-stimulating hormone which helps assess ovarian function

This information can assist doctors with predicting, with 70% accuracy, whether a woman undergoing IVF treatment will become pregnant.  Experts say IVF research needs to move from focusing on selecting the best embryos to targetin gthe techniquest that would improve the qulaity of the entire group on embryos.

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There was a recent study performed at Cambridge University in Britain that shows that child conceived using Assisted Reproduction due as well emotionally as those conceived naturally.

The study involved 198 families;  39 surrogacy families, 43 donor insemination families, 46 egg donation families and 70 naturally conceived families. 

The researchers looked at the psychological well-being of the parents and kids and the quality of their relationships.  All the results of the study showed that there is no psychological damage to the child, parents or the relationship using Assisted Reproduction as a means of conceiving a child. 

The more surprising results of this study were that only 39 percent of egg donation parents, 29 percent of donor insemination parents and 89 percent of surrogacy parents told their children how they were conceived. 

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