IVF Pregnancy rates continue to improve

The graph below details the average pregnancy rates in our unit for all patients attending the unit in 2010. The results on the HFEA website are usually two years out of date. It should be emphasised that all treatments are age sensitive.

Blastocyst Transfers – extended embryo culture significantly increases pregnancy rates

At IVF Hammersmith we have recently invested heavily in state of the art incubators and culture media. These improvements have significantly increased the chances of pregnancy for our patients regardless of age, treatment type or day of embryo transfer. With the improved culture environment comes the ability to offer blastocyst culture to an expanding number of patients so that now, almost 50% of our patients have embryos transferred at the blastocyst stage.

Blastocysts have been shown to have the highest implantation potential of all the stages of embryos that may be transferred back into the uterus and we have shown this to be true with our exceptionally high pregnancy rate of over 60% for blastocyst transfers in patients who are less than 37 years old.

New strategy significantly improves outcome with frozen embryos

Traditionally, frozen-thawed success rates are typically 20-30% lower than the pregnancy rates achieved using fresh embryos. Recently we have been able to significantly improve our success rates from an average of 22% in 2008 to an average of 40% for the first 6 months of 2010 which is higher than many clinics achieve using fresh embryos.

Innovations in genetic testing continue at IVF Hammersmith

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) was pioneered at the Hammersmith Hospital.  This year we have reported the first pregnancies in the United Kingdom for tuberous sclerosis and phenylketonuria. Pre-implantation screening (PGS) involves applying this technology to infertile couples having IVF performing a sophisticated and powerful genetic analysis of their eggs prior to transfer. This allows us select the best embryos based on their genetic potential not only their morphological appearance. Whilst very promising this remains an experimental technique. Currently we are only recommending this for poor prognosis patients (anticipated success <10%). Our preliminary data for the first six months of 2010 suggests that pregnancy rates may be improved.  This technique is currently not available on the NHS

	Age<36	Age>36	Total
Pregnancy rate	50%	38%	40%
Number	10	21	31