Approaching different techniques to improve IVF results

Yes, frozen sperm is enough for ICSI. When we do ICSI, we just need the spermatozoa that we’re going to use for fertilization, so if we have 5 eggs, we just need 5 good spermatozoa, so a frozen sperm is enough. If the patient has a good sperm and not a severe condition, so yes, it’s enough.

It’s not new, maybe it’s been used for 5 years, and we use it all the time in our clinics, and it’s working very well. We can say that it’s nothing that just came out, it’s something that we’ve been using for a few years and it’s very useful.

I think other clinics use it, but every clinic is different. Every clinic has different protocols. I think they use it, but not every clinic for sure.

Embryoglue works very well, we use it at our clinic, and it’s been scientifically proven that it helps to make the implantation in the endometrium and, so we use it, and we recommend it every time. When it comes to EmbryoGen culture, I have never heard about it, so I can’t say anything about this.

Every case has its own complications, and there are a lot of factors that are involved in the pregnancy, not only the eggs, not only the sperm but also the uterus, the endometriosis, which you’ve mentioned, the best thing would be to do a skype consultation with a doctor to advise properly. As there were 18 eggs and 12 embryos, it’s a very good cycle, but maybe there are other things that are missing, so it’s better to talk in a private and consult with a doctor.

Embryoglue is a medium that we use, it has some specific qualities, we use it before doing a transfer. The embryo will be in culture, in a normal culture during the 5 days or the 3 days and then before we do the transfer, we leave the embryos in EmbryoGlue for about a half-hour because the EmbryoGlue has specific material and thanks to that the embryo can attach better to the endometrium, it’s proven that it helps and we use it a lot.

It’s different. Sperm sorting, we don’t use it. What we do is capacitation of the sperm, which is having only the mobile spermatozoa and then after that, we do the MACS.

We used to do that, we don’t do it anymore, and it’s not that it doesn’t improve that much the implantation, at least it’s what we have seen in our clinic. There are some embryos, which would benefit from that, but the embryos. If they are of good quality, they can do their own hatching and implant on their own, so we don’t really believe in this technique. I mean, it can help, of course, but we don’t do it.

It’s been studied that there is no difference in frozen egg donation. There’s no difference between frozen or fresh cycles. Both of them are good, both of them have the same implantation rates, so it doesn’t really matter. We do both of them, and none of them has a better rate than the other or a better chance, so we recommend both. It depends on the patient. If the patient is synchronized with the donor, then we do it in fresh. If for, some reason, it doesn’t work, we do a frozen egg donation, and there is no difference.

We don’t give too high doses, 300 -350 at most, we don’t want to give too high doses of gonadotropins.

Your AMH is a little bit low, it’s true, and it depends on how the eggs were when you did the IVF because maybe you had 2 embryos, but they weren’t of good quality, it depends on the quality of the embryos that you had and the transfer. If they were very good embryos, I would maybe try it again, but it also depends on your age, but of course, the chances with egg donation will be much better.

First of all, maybe we should see the quality of the eggs. If it is not good, one option is to try egg donation, I know it’s tough sometimes to estimate this decision. If you accumulate embryos and then do a PGT-A for not having miscarriages or for avoiding these implantation failures because maybe you don’t know if the embryos that you’re transferring are genetically okay, so maybe they look good, but they have an aneuploidy. This could be one option to do a PGT-A, and if this doesn’t work, I would recommend the egg donation. Aneuploid embryos are one of the most common causes of miscarriages, so that’s why it helps to do a screening of those embryos, and maybe you have good embryos, but you if you don’t know how the genetics are, maybe this could be one solution.

You can try it, I mean everyone, I think everyone wants to try with her own eggs, and sometimes it helps, even if your AMH is a little bit low, you can try it. If this doesn’t work, egg donation is always an answer for this type of case, but in Spain, the egg donation is totally anonymous, so you can’t choose the sperm donor or the egg donor, so it would be totally anonymous. We use Fenomatch, as I’ve mentioned in my presentation, and we select a donor that is most similar to the patient genetically and physically.

Here, it could be good to do MACS or a PGT-A as well because if the sperm has abnormalities, it can influence the genetics of the embryos, so maybe here there is a genetic problem. We would like to know what quality these embryos have because they were of bad quality. If they were of good quality and it did fail, I would recommend doing a PGT-A having the information that I have.

This can happen, it’s something that sometimes can happen because the embryos have to be of very good quality to survive the freezing. Some embryos can survive it very well, but others don’t survive it, and we can’t really explain why. One of the reasons is because maybe they were frozen and are not of good quality, other times it happens and nowadays we still don’t know why. This is a little bit of a risk that can happen, but most of the time, embryos survive the freezing.

Egg quality depends on a lot of factors, age, genetics, lifestyle, and we can’t really do something to improve the egg quality. Women are born with eggs, and during the time and after a few years, the egg quality starts to diminish, and this is something that we cannot change. We can say that perhaps our lifestyle changes can help, but the most important thing is age and genetics.

Nowadays, it can’t be tested. We can say that for sure, there is no scientific evidence about it because there are many factors that we don’t know, and we try to work with the factors that we do know and the factors that are scientifically proven, but in our experience, we see that should not be a problem with the immune system. We always do our best to make sure that the genetics are compatible with the receiver, and we don’t have any issues with that.