Dr P, would really appreciate your view, please

[CrystalTipps]

Hi Dr Potter, I have just undergone a second unsuccessful Donor Egg IVF/PGD cycle in my quest to have a daughter. I do not understand why we have had two such catastrophic failures and I would really appreciate your view.

Cycle No. 1
Donor - 28 years old, 2 children of her own, good pretesting
AFC 16
12 eggs retrieved
8 fertilised
7 abnormal
1 normal, albeit v. poor quality. Did not implant.

Cycle No. 2
Donor - 20 years old, 1 child of her own, good pretesting
AFC 18
11 eggs retrieved
7 fertilised
7 abnormal, no transfer.

I know that often one can only speculate as to what has gone wrong, but I would be really interested to hear what advice you would give to me if I were your patient.

Many thanks,

Crystal

[Dr. Potter]

Hi Dr Potter, I have just undergone a second unsuccessful Donor Egg IVF/PGD cycle in my quest to have a daughter. I do not understand why we have had two such catastrophic failures and I would really appreciate your view.

Cycle No. 1
Donor - 28 years old, 2 children of her own, good pretesting
AFC 16
12 eggs retrieved
8 fertilised
7 abnormal
1 normal, albeit v. poor quality. Did not implant.

Cycle No. 2
Donor - 20 years old, 1 child of her own, good pretesting
AFC 18
11 eggs retrieved
7 fertilised
7 abnormal, no transfer.

I know that often one can only speculate as to what has gone wrong, but I would be really interested to hear what advice you would give to me if I were your patient.

Many thanks,

CrystalThat is a very, very unusual situation and I am sorry for your difficulties. The three possibilities are that: 1) something is wrong with your husband or 2) something is wrong with the lab or 3) you have incredibly bad luck. What sort of PGD was being done? Is it a center that does a lot of it? Has your husband been genetically tested? I would say that the first order of business would be to determine if the abnormal results are artifact, due to abnormalities with your husbands sperm or bad luck. So I would have genetic testing (karyotype) on husband and if normal, next cycle make sure that you use GSN 24 so that you would know what the origin of the abnormalities are and if they are real.

[CrystalTipps]

Thank you Dr Potter, I very much appreciate your reply. It is interesting that you recommend GSN as our RE is recommending less probes than the 5 we did, but I think these poor results mean that we should do more? I already have a child with a devastating chromosomal abnormality, I don't think I could cope with another.

Could you recommend somewhere that does sperm testing? We have some already frozen.

Incidentally, for Donor #2 our RE told us that the eggs looked "dark". Is this significant, do you think?

Thanks,

Crystal Tipps.