Our final event of 2023!
Professor Alison Campbell; Chief Scientific Officer & Professor Charles Kingsland; Chief Medical Officer answer everything you want to know about fertility treatment at Care Fertility 💜
And as a thank you for watching, we are offering a discounted consultation with code FAW until 30th November 2023
Care Fertility- The UK’s leading fertility group
https://www.carefertility.com/contact-us/book-a-consultation
Good evening hello so welcome it’s very nice to have you all with us I just wait a few moments to uh let everybody in so here we are just wait a few seconds you’re in the right place so a very warm welcome to everybody joining our virtual information evening this evening
It’s our free online information event so hopefully you’re going to get a lot of information over the next 45 minutes or so okay so I’m Allison cble I’m care fertilities Chief scientific officer and I’m going to be hosting this event this evening so I’ll just go through what you
Can what you can expect from the event it’s going to last around 40 minutes we’ve got some information information videos about care fertility and all about our team I’m going to walk you through a typical IVF treatment pathway right from the consultation through to Embryo transfer I’ve got lots of
Diagrams to share with you photographs and videos so hopefully it’s going to be really informative we’ve also got a really exciting Q&A session that’s with myself and professor Charles Kingsland in about 20 minutes half an hour’s time so you can start thinking now if you’d like to
Ask questions you can put those in the private questions tab or else you can put them in the public chat just remember that if you put them in the chat then um everyone will be able to see at least your first name you can also send questions by email if you
Prefer that’s to events care fertility.com and as always if we don’t get chance to answer all your questions throughout the course of this event then we will reply to you via email and later on or over the next day or so so I’m also very pleased to let you
Know that our new patient inquiry team are available they’re in the wings right now and they’re going to be staying until 8:00 this evening I’ve got a number for you if you want to call the team it’s 0800 564 2270 so we’re going to get started with
A very short introductory video so just introducing you to care Fertility family it’s who we are and who we’re always going to be it’s the important little moments the big emotions the Beating Heart at the center of our world world it’s the journey that we take there together one step at a time family is the one thing we’ll
Always care about the most because we believe that family is for everyone and through our care we’ll do everything we can to make your dream real we don’t just care we are care uh my name is professor Charles Kingsland and I’m the group Clinical Director for care fertility at care our
Number one belief is family for everyone and this means we do everything possible to help everyone start or grow their family we know that nothing is as important as family and that’s why we care so much about wanting to give every patient that comes to us their best
Chance of having a baby of course families come in all shapes and sizes we get heterosexual couples couples of the same sex we get uh single patients wanting to uh to start a family we get NHS patients when you have a fertility problem there should be facilities
Available for you to get the best advice and the best treatment readily available to give you the best chance of having a baby at a time in your life that is best for you we will use all our knowledge and experience combined with highly individualized treatment personal
Treatment to help you have the family you are longing for unbeknown to G and I um we both carry a gene um a deess gene we actually have a daughter um who who was three but who was born prematurely death and we were given the option and
Chose to go down a fertility treatment to kind of avoid our second child having that same gene we were very lucky in the fact that um the clinic was only down the road from us so we felt there was one around the corner it was had good
Reviews we just felt it was good for us didn’t we the whole package made us just feel really comfortable actually going with care was the right decision so the team the team that we worked with at care were unbelievable they were caring they were sensitive they were compassionate
Empathetic um and even when I was ringing out with um I was feeling pains down one side that the reassurance that they gave me uh they honestly do Hold Your Hand every single step of the way and I feel like they lived the journey with us so I’ve
Had several treatments with care and I now have a baby and that’s taken um a number of treatments fertility treatments different Alternatives different medicines to try and get it to work for me I have always said I would recommend care fertility I would recom recommend them for the comfort factor
That I received the friendliness and just my I think the word is my faith in cility sorry unmute so about one in six people need help starting a family and I think people don’t really understand and realize just how high that rate is and the World Health Organization considers
Infertility subfertility a disease uh and I think that’s really important that people recognize that right care we truly believe that family is for everyone um we help all different types of patients with a large selection of treatment options and it’s very much tailored depending on your situation so
During this event we’re going to focus mainly on the general IVF process just helps most patients will go through that PA pathway and and it helps you hopefully understand what it entails but whether you have treatment with your own eggs your own sperm your partner’s sperm or a donor egg donor sperm the
Principles are all the same with the IVF process that I’m going to walk you through now here’s the map of our clinics we now have clinics across the UK we’ve got Dublin as well and several satellites around the UK we’ve also got three clinics in Spain and one in the
US so with our our our this arrangement with the clinics all over the place our patients can benefit benefit from the knowledge that we pull from all these Specialists from not just in the UK now but all over the world and we offer treatments in very local Friendly Clinic
Facilities but we have this power of of a much bigger Network so it’s really easy to get started with treatment at care and um if we move on to the next slide this is sha so she we’re going to hear from her in a video a little bit
Later Ron um she is the head of our patient experience and we have a new patient inquiry team and they’re really friendly and knowledgeable and they they’re here tonight they’ll be on the phones if you want to call in or if you send some questions they’ll be Fielding them to
Us and they’re here till 8 o’ now getting the DI right diagnosis gathering information from you is a really important place to start and that if we can do this properly in which we do this really well then we gather all our information before we first see you
And then we can give you the best possible advice and we do this because we’ve got a secure online portal so all your information can go to this portal and we hold that information before your appointment and following your appointment and then continues throughout your treatment so pre-treatment tests are
Very important so if you’ve had previous treatments or tests somewhere else we can get those uploaded onto this portal so there’s often no need for you to repeat tests that have been done previously and this the basic Suite of tests that are generally required before a consultation or or at the time of
Consultation will be the amh blood test the pelvic ultrasound and a SE analysis so once we’ve got this information it will all be reviewed by one of our Consultants before your consultation appointment and then the next stage will be the consultation and the next slide shows George very friendly um consultant from
Sheffield and so in your initial consultation your fertility specialist will first of all listen to what your fertility plans and wishes are they’ll go through any existing test results that we have available and they’ll explain if they think you need any further tests that will help us gauge
The situation and what treatment we should be recommending if any and when the consultant talks about the different treatment options with you they’ll also give you an indication of the chance of success so the intention from a consultation is that when you go away from the consultation with you you’ll
Have all the detailed information that you need about the treatment options for you and you’ll be able to consider that in your own own time and you’ll also know how and when to get support from our team you’ll know any the cost of any treatment anything that you’ve been
Discussing might have um cost if you’re not NHS funded so you’ll have everything that you need to make decisions about what what you want to do next this is a just a picture to show you the patient portal that I mentioned so after your consultation our Clinic teams will load information into the
Portal so that you can access that um at your measure so starting treatment of course everybody’s treatment needs are different um we pride ourselves at care fertility in offering really individualized treatments so our treatment offerings will start quite simple for example with intrauterine insemination and they progress to some really technologically advanced
Award-winning um complex treatments we’ll talk about those a little bit later so I’m going to just spend a few minutes walking through you through through a typical IVF treatment pathway because most patients will need conventional IVF and and much of this IVF Journey that I’ll talk you through is applicable to other
Treatments so the first stage of the IVF process is called ovarian stimulation and this is where we prescribe some medicines to stimulate your ovaries to develop follicles from which we can collect eggs don’t don’t worry if you’re using donor eggs then we’ll be doing exactly this process with
The egg donor so everyone’s issued with a medication protocol which one of our expert nurses will go through and explain to you so they can do that face to face but we’ve also got teaching videos that we can share with you through your portal so if you forget or
Youd prefer to have the information delivered that way you can certainly do that so generally you’ll administer your own injections but we’ll we’ll certainly be able to teach you how to do that so once we’ve done the um the ovarian stimulation we started that we’re going to begin the monitoring so
Monitoring is for us to be able to see how you’re responding to those medicines that we’ve given to you so the next slide will show Rema hopefully our doctor from care Burmingham as she’s coming up but this is the aarian stimulation the how we show you the um
Injections and here is Rema doing the monitoring with an ultrasound probe so you probably had ultrasound some of you for different um parts of the body we use ultrasound to see what’s happening in the ovaries so we monitoring the developing follicles in your ovaries using ultrasound and this phase is
Called the monitoring phase and it lasts between three and seven days so you’ll probably pay two maybe three visits to the clinic during this phase whil we’re stimulating the Ovis with the medicines and um what we’re doing is looking to see the number and the size of the follicles that are developing on
The ovary when we’re happy that the size and number is optimal we will prescribe a trigger injection which will help us mature those eggs that are developing in the follicles and we usually do this injection in the evening when you do it yourself we’ll tell you when and then
Your egg collection is scheduled for around 36 hours after that so the next slide will show us hopefully the egg collection so here we see it’s don’t want you to be daunted by this um picture it’s it’s they’re a bit medical these pictures but some patients really
Want to try and understand how how this works so I think it’s important just to speak briefly to this it’s a straightforward procedure we use ultrasound again to guide a needle through to the follicles on the ovaries where we really carefully extract the eggs that are developing there takes
About 20 minutes half an hour at most and it’s usually followed by a short rest so just before you go home but it’s a it’s very much a day case a very short case um outpatient so you’re in and out within usually just a couple of hours
And as I said before if you’re using donor eggs then we’ll usually Thor eggs around the time that the sperm is being produced so um the next slide we’ll talk about sperm so the sperm collection it’s generally we prepare the sperm around the same time as the eggs are being
Collected or the eggs are being th if they’re donor eggs and this sperm here we can see there’s a little video hopefully they’ll start moving and so many of them on this slide you can see them swimming hopefully um now this SPM may have been previously frozen it may
Be surgically recovered it may be produced by a partner it may be donor sperm but however we’ve we’ve um we’ve obtained the sperm we prepare it in a very similar way and the embryologists that care will always talk to our patients once we’ve prepared the eggs
And the sperm so that we can advise you on the next steps and answer any questions that you might have so we’re going to move on to the fertilization step and then I’ll talk about embryo development so the next step once we’ve um we’ve got the eggs and the sperm is
Putting them together so we can do this in two ways either by conventional IVF which is where we mix the eggs and sperm that we’ve prepared and we leave them overnight so fairly straightforward we’ve prepared the sperm so we’ve concentrated the best ones into a very small volume we’ve washed
The eggs and we put them together we calculate the right number of sperm to mix with the eggs and we leave them overnight and the alternative method of fertilization is called ixie and this is generally used when the sperm numbers or the sperm quality are low and what we’ll
Do here and you can see in the middle picture there we will inject a single sperm and inject it very carefully into the middle of each of the mature eggs so the method that we use we’ve got those two methods we’ve got IVF where we mix the eggs and sperm and we’ve got
Ixie where we inject a single sperm into the egg we usually decide before egg collection before the egg collection day a few days before which one would be most appropriate based on your sperm count now this video here is the ixie that I described fine needle which is 10
Times finer than a than a hair and controlled by micromanipulators is injected into the middle of the egg and just see the sperm being deposited right now now very successful method so we’ve got highly skilled embryologists working at micromanipulators very high magnification to inject a single sperm into the
Egg so the next step it’s probably my favorite is the fertilization assessment so we need to look down our microscopes to see if the embryos have fertilized and what we’re looking for to nuclei once from the egg and once from the sperm and that is one of the most
Wonderful sites an embryologist can see we’ve got we’ve achieve fertilization and then we’ll contact the patients and let them know the good news and more than 95% of our patients will get good news after we’ve mixed the eggs and sperm in one of those two ways they will know that we’ve achieved
Fertilization so following fertilization confirmation the embryos are left mostly undisturbed for for a few days in a a special culture medium and we’ve got very um specific culture dishes we’ve got electronically tagged uniquely identifiable dishes so very high security throughout our Laboratories and we aim to perform the
Embryo transfer at the blasticus stage so we will have grown these embryos in our little dishes in our specialized incubators for four to six days after egg collection and most patients have several embryos to choose between but how do we choose which embryo to transfer now we’ve got
Two very specialist techniques that we use at care fertility and this one is called care Maps AI so this is our own algorithm our own invention to you we use artificial intelligence systems to assess the embryo development and this is Time Lapse here so it’s driven with
Time lapse you can see we’re taking phot photographs of the embryo every 10 minutes or so and we can see its development really clearly so we’ve trained an artificial intelligence algorithm like a um machine to analyze these developmental patterns and these Fe feed into our algorithm which then
Gives us a score for each embryo and we choose the highest score and these models that we’ve built have recently won some awards so we’ve got the N National technology award and we also won the Royal College of Pathologists Achievement Award for this work so it’s
Um it’s making news all over the place because it’s um such a sophisticated and reliable tool so that’s one way which we can use to choose the best embryo from a group uh the other method that we use is called pre-implantation genetic testing for anupy so it’s mainly used for women over
37 because as women get older here’s the example examp Le video here their egg quality declines and the number of chromosomes in the eggs can go wrong so this is called amloid so by removing a few cells from the blasticus which is what you’re seeing now with a biopsy
Pepet we can get those cells tested to see if they’ve got the right copy number of chromosomes and if they have we can infer that the rest of the embryo is the same and what we’re wanting to get some get back from the genetics lab is good
News that the chromosome copy number is correct in in this embryo or these embryos and they’re the ones will choose for transfer so we remove a few cells at that advanced stage of embryo development called the blast Tois stage so pgta is is what we call this technique it’s not really offered to
Everyone but if our Consultants think that you would benefit then it will certainly be discussed in your consultation so we’ve talked about how we choose embryos and and the next stage once we’ve done that is the embryo transfer so irrespective of how or which embryo we have chosen we use exactly the
Same method to transfer it we use the same method even if it’s a frozen th embryo so what we do is the embryologist loads the embryo into a very soft fine catheter which is then inserted through the vagina into the cervix into the womb using again we use the ultrasound
Guidance and this only takes 10 or 15 minutes and then you can go about your normal activity straight afterwards some people like to rest but um there’s no evidence that resting makes a difference so after that very important Embryo transfer before you go home one of our nurses explains what’s going to happen
Next and this is commonly called the two week weight before you do your pregnancy test so you might be really surprised that only two weeks after the embryo transfer you can perform a pregnancy test there’s the embryo transfer in a procedure room usually with the doctor there and a nurse or nurse practitioner
And the embryologist comes through with the catheter threads it through very carefully and then depresses the syringe and the embryos left inside the womb so the pregnancy test is set confirmed two weeks after transfer if it’s positive you come back to the clinic for a scan to look for a
Heartbeat a few weeks after that and if it’s negative then we’ll offer our support we have counseling available and we’ll also arrange a follow-up consultation so we can talk about um next steps and and what we’ve learned from that treatment and and how we might move forward
Together so we’ll move on just to talk a little bit about donation we now at at care fertility we have a huge team of donation and counseling Specialists so we’ve got everything in place if you need to use Donut eggs donut sperm or donut embryos now our donation team has over
25 years or we as a a a group have over 25 years of experience of donation we’ve helped more people start a family with the help of a donor than any other UK Clinic we we pride ourselves in our donation activities and and treatments so we support you through the entire
Process right from the initial questions um through to selecting your donor we have a portal again you can select your donor through that and we have lots of Partners across the world um that support our donation program we are oh and we’ve won another award so um we’ve won a national
Surrogacy award and through our donation experts and I just read this quote saying that surrogacy is such a hard process but care and The Specialist surrogacy Team have made the journey so much easier and we’ve always been well informed throughout our journey no matter how big or small and um we was
Gave patients an update oh that’s that’s a nice quote so support so I just wanted to say a few words about the support that you received at care we’ve I’ve mentioned counseling so we offer free counseling appointments and we’ve also got a buddy a care buddy program so we can link you
Up with other patients undergoing treatment at a similar time if you wish it’s not for everybody but some people find that really helpful we have regular online support groups we have a a forum an online Forum so you can chat with other patients and all of this is
Supported by the care team the Care Specialists and counselors and and all of our staff actually so we’ll just move along to uh talk about as the support that’s the um the portal where we The Forum where we can interact with each other as patients and get some support and we know that
Every patients journey is unique we try and accommodate everybody’s um needs by offering different supporting very many different ways so we’re here to support you not just medically but emotionally and financially and here’s a nice slide just to show the social media that we provide to give you information the care Pals
Who’ll hold your hand from uh through the treatment journey and answer your questions we’ve got the counseling the resource Hub with lots of information and we’ve got the inquiry team that can support you with any questions at the beginning of this treatment and the Forum as well and speaking about financial
Support we have H something called care pay so this is something that we’ve tailored ourselves it’s exclusive to us and it’s IVF funding packages so designed to give our patients financial peace of mind so they know that there’s a plan in place to fund their treatment if they need to be
Self-funded and we created this following lots of patient feedback and it so it’s managed entirely inhouse so our patients should have a more seamless experience and and their treatments kept very personal and private just as an alternative to going to some of these third parties who can uh provide funding
Externally so we do this all inhouse and we’ve got three main programs care pay we’ve got the multicycle program we’ve got a refund program and we’ve got a donor egg program and all of them include the cycle monitoring that we’ spoke about the egg collection all of the embryology
Including the care Maps AI which is the the algorithm to help us choose the embrio the embryo transfer the freezing and storage and then unlimited embryo transfers so I think it’s time to go to some some patient comments here I won’t read through them but if you’ve got you
Can have a look at them while I’m talking but we’re going to move on to our first Q&A session of this event so just to remind you before we do that we have our new patient inquiry team available if you want to call in and
Speak to them they’ll be there till 8 o’ and if You’ got to any questions any burning questions please put them in the chat or the questions tab or you can email us at events care fertility.com any question is fine we um we get all sorts of questions and often um the
Questions are relevant to lots of different patients so let’s let’s see what you want to ask us and here is professor Charles Kingsland welcome good evening hello Professor Campbell how are you I’m fine thank you and you know what I found out when I saw the slide Professor Campbell Professor kingsand
That uh the collective noun for professors is faculty faculty but wondering what yeah go on well the the collective noun as well for felines is also faculty so I have a faculty at my house oh dear no I I always thought when I was at Medical School a bunch of of
Bunch of professors had a different um name but um it’s it’s reassuring that it’s it’s faculty faculty not something else that’s good yes so there’s a lot of there’s a lot of questions here Alison I don’t know whether we’re going to get them through them all but shall we um
Shall we have a go yeah let’s talk well I think the first one I can see is um probably good one for you yeah so women over the women over the age of 40 what considerations should you make I presume this um this this lady is considering having a family if
If a if I were over 40 my major consideration was would be get treatment if you need it quickly because uh women’s um fertility declines very rapidly over the age of 35 and so don’t wait around um get advice if you want a family quickly and I
Wouldn’t worry about this this idea of oh you’ve got to keep trying for 18 months a year six months if you have a if you perceive to be a problem even after one month if it’s causing you anxiety get expert advice if it nothing else just for reassurance and that will
Um that will make a a a load of difference um to you so my advice to that would be get cracking yeah get cracking and if if women over 40 find themselves in our consultation rooms then we would probably almost certainly be recommending pgta if they were to
Have IVF treatment so where we take the biopsy from the embryos to see the chromosome complement yeah exactly right what about the time scale from consultation to getting started with the medications how long does it generally take well ideally it should be as short as possible but um generally speaking I
Would say expect around two to three Cycles there’s a a there are one or two things that you need to go through between having a consult consultation with the clinician whether it be a doctor or a nurse practitioner and actually getting treatment we are regulated by the human fertilization and
Embryology Authority and the consent forms that you have to sign are can be quite tedious and involved we will guide you through that but it can take a little while to get those uh all sorted similarly if you’re a fee paying patient then we need to get all the um all the
Those aspects of the the treatment in place particularly if you’re one of our um uh care pay schemes so that by the time you start you know exactly how much you’re going to pay exactly what’s um what the treatment you’re going to get so I would say expect about two to three
Cycles um if it gets longer than that then really you need to you need to find out why would you say that’s very reasonable Allison yeah makes sense yeah yeah and some people well some people want to get moving they’ve they’ve had the consultation and they just want to
Get on with it and others might say right I’ve got my information now I know what to expect I’m going to just wait a few months so yeah we can be very flexible with patient requests in terms of treatment starting yeah next question what you do have to remember though if you’ve had
Tests for if you’ve had blood tests for your viral uh screen because we have to screen you for Hepatitis B C and HIV they only they only stay in date for three months so you need to bear that in mind that if you want to have treatment
And then and then go off and go on holiday or do other things before you come back we might need to repeat your results your your your blood tests not all of them but one or two of them some of them all right so well let’s talk
About this would had a question about poor embryo quality so what could the reasons be so let’s do a couple of reasons each okay uh I’ll start age is um medical condition that whatever’s caused of fertility uh might your fertility problem may be a may be an issue whether it be thyroid disease
It might be um weight it could be but most critically it I would say h what what would you say yeah I’d say the same thing but um I I would also say that it’s it’s quite a subjective thing embryo quality when people talk about embryo quality it’s probably because the embryologist
Has said oh these embryos a little bit fragmented or the quality is low and actually our AI tool like care Maps sometimes proves that to be wrong so sometimes embryos might not look fabulous like textbook but they’ve got a really high score based on their developmental patterns so that’s why
It’s so powerful so it may be that the appearance isn’t great but the quality is higher than than it seems so it’s a it’s a funny one It’s Tricky but um what I can say as well is that if we have patients who’ve had certainly had low embryo quality or they’ve had recurrent
Transfers with no pregnancy which would indicate it could be an embryo problem then we have some tools in our toolkit that we can try and use to address that so we’ve got some specialized culture media that we don’t use for everybody but it may be all that’s needed to
Improve the embryo quality so lots of uh tricks that we can do to try and try and change that and um may I may I congratulate you again Professor Cameron on all these Awards you’re winning for for uh your artificial intelligence in care care Maps it really is um very very
Impressive and um the now that we’re transferring them over to the clinical Arena where we’re seeing benefits for patients I think it’s uh it’s really fabulous really fabulous yeah and your oh well big team effort yeah it was a dream big team effort yeah we’ve had a hatrick of awards so uh and
It’s just nice to get that external recognition for all the effort that does that mean you does that mean you had to buy three frocks or did you just wear the one three times to the well I only went one of the award ceremonies we’re
Just trying to share them out but yeah I wor my Pink Suit very impressive very impress right here’s a good question um can I start a new round of IVF if I’m still breastfeeding or do I have to or can I have an embryo transfer and because they’ve got patients got some frozen
Embryos yeah first of all the very fact your uh breastfeeding deserves two lots of congratulations first of all the congratulations on on having your baby um I hope it’s a care baby and secondly uh congratulations on breastfeeding because of course breastfeeding is is not always easy and it confers so much
Benefit not only to the baby but also um to the mother themselves um but unfortunately whe when you are breastfeeding um You release a hormone called prolactin and prolactin is contraceptive so my advice would be the benefits of breastfeeding for your baby far outweigh the time delay that you
Will need for your next for for your next attempt to I F or next T at your Embryo transfer so breastfeeding is great for the baby great for you but not necessarily great for IVF so what I would do is is wean when the time is
Right for you and your baby wean your baby off the breast and then once the the prolactin levels that you’ve been producing to create breast milk have gone down then you can start um thinking about your frozen embryo transfer so everything in order um but get stop breastfeeding first but don’t stop
Breastfeeding prematurely wait because your embryos are frozen in time they won’t deteriorate and neither will your uterus so get the breastfeeding done and then and then um get we’ll sort out your embryo replacement after that yeah and that that patient put a little purple sort of care Purple Heart next to the
Question that was nice oh great well done here another medical question Charles for you here do I need to wait for doctor’s clearance after a laparoscopy and tube removal before starting IVF um the answer to that would be yes I would when if I’ve removed um Fallopian
Tubes I would always like just to check up on the patient to make sure she’s well um and she’s recovered well from the operation her her stitches have have um operation wounds have have healed um and it’s only a quick phone call so you don’t have to wait months and months and
Months for a for a um for for a follow-up consultation a quick phone call should do it how are you feeling everything okay any problems periods come back um no abnormal bleeding and then away we go um so the answer is yeah I I would I would just get the goahead
But you don’t have to see the doctor or the nurse for that matter just um just get the the okay and then we’ll see you great we’ve got lots of medical questions I’m glad you’re here oh gosh okay yeah we’ve this question is a good one really good one it’s about
Miscarriage so the patient has had three miscarriages so he’s asking would the process that I’ve just been describing be the same um well if you’ve had three miscarriages um the chance of you having a miscarriage just out of by chance is one in five two on the Trot is one in five
Time five and three on the Trot is one in five Time 5 Time 5 which is one in 125 so it it it’s if you have three recurrent miscarriages it’s less likely that it will be due to the um due to the problem with the baby it’s maybe a
Problem with the intended mother so what I would do if you’ve had three uh miscarriages on the truck we need to run some tests to make sure there aren’t any conditions that may be affecting implantation or may be affecting your ability to retain um a pregnancy so
Three three miscarriages on the Trot we call recurrent miscarriage and that warrants a further evaluation before you go ahead with any further fertility uh treatment and we at care can do that that’s what we do um that’s part of our remit and the fortunate one of the fortunate things about working with such
A wide in a big group where with the largest um fertility treatment provider in the UK is that we have experts in all different areas of um fertility including recurrent miscarriage so we can we can actually talk and chat and and compare notes with each other so um what I would
Do before we do anything else is just make sure that there’s nothing un toward um going on with you that’s causing the miscarriages and then we can crack on yeah great uh now this patient has sounds like a cone biopsy or some cervical um surgery would we do a mock
Embryo transfer just to make sure always yes in those situations you you’ve had surgery on your cervix we um we would be foolish not to have a just a trial run to make sure that on the day of your embrya transfer there are no untoward problems that that may occur so
We we would we would normally do a trial run and if there were problems we could fix them before you you went on for your um IVF and embryo transfer yeah great um a question about Clomid So the patient’s on Clomid um I think they just want to know at
What point would they go to IVF like I’ve described I started with ovarian stimulation I didn’t go before that because sometimes there would be Clomid particularly with the en if if Clomid is a hormone that that cuts off the the um the messages between your brain and your
Ovary so you take Clomid and your brain goes oh hang on a minute my OV is not working I’ll push out more hormone to get it working so it actually has the effect of giving your OV a kick and we usually use it to get you to
Ovulate but if Clomid is working and you are ovulating and you’ve ovulated on six occasions and you’ve timed your intercourse to to to coincide with your ovulation and you’ve not got pregnant that’s the time when you we should be thinking about the next stage of your treatment because if if the Clomid
Hasn’t worked after six months of trying six months of ovulatory Cycles the chances are that it’s not going to work sometimes doctors might choose to give you another two or three months but generally speaking if you’ve ovulated for six times with timed intercourse with clomin and it hasn’t worked then you need to
Seek um additional advice and normally the next thing after that would be IVF don’t hang around one of the one of the the real problems that we have um infertility is that we we try too long to treat you with or to treat you with methods and treatments that may not be
Of your benefit get the right treatment as quickly as possible Clomid is the right treatment for you in many cases but if it hasn’t worked after six months we need to move on yeah great now we’ve we’ve got a bit of time left but we’ve got a couple of questions about natural
Conception so first one is saying is it better to find your ovulation and Target the sex is that better or worse than just having regular intercourse every couple of days um well ideally um if if you can if you can go through the stress of of pinpointing ovulation that’s better
Because five what you could do if you if you know what day you ovulate say you ovulate on day 14 every month then get your partner if you’re in a heterosexual relationship to have a five day sperm count on board so because a five day sperm count is is has the best quality
So basically um if you ovulate on day 14 empty the tanks on day nine and then build up a nice head of steam so you got five uh days of of of um sperm on board and then have intercourse daily thereafter if that be if that’s too
Stressful or you think no we don’t want to do that then every alternate day around the time of ovulation is fine is fine but the key to conception of course is regular unprotected sexual intercourse yeah it’s not a good idea for the guy to just abstain abstain
Abstain thinking that the tanks are are filling up and no for weeks on end it’s really not because the quality of the sperm will will decrease that’s right sperms start swimming around and attacking themselves um after a few after you know a few weeks and so you’re
Absolutely right Ali you um the what you need to do is if you are trying for a pregnancy you need to keep make sure that that the pipes are nice and clean so you need to ejaculate regularly yeah not too regularly by the way not too regularly another question
About natural natural conception so this ladi’s periods are only two days long and they also have stage three and Demetri iosis is there a way they can thicken their endometrial wall whilst they’re trying to conceive naturally whilst they’re waiting for IVF treatment well you might not need to
Thicken your endometrial W I don’t know whe the only way you can find out whether your endometrial wall is thick enough is um is by measuring it on an ultrasound scan and we like it to be about 7 mm so if you are having if you are having regular scans around the time
Of of ulation then your doctor or your scanner will give you advice as to how you could if you need to thicken your endometrium but normally if you’re ovulating your the lining of your wound will be thick um will be um thick enough so you don’t actually need um any the
Fact that you’re only having two day bleeds doesn’t doesn’t matter the key to periods is they are regular rhythmical and predictable if you bleed for one day or five days it doesn’t really give you any indication as to whether your endometrium is thick or thin what the
Key is is that you bleed predictably and I’ve seen plenty of women who only have a period for one day who who get pregnant very very quickly similarly five days it so there’s no correlation just because you’re having two-day periods doesn’t mean that you’re end demetrium isn’t thick enough the key as
I said before is to make sure that your periods come regularly and predictably if they don’t that might be a problem but the two days is not a problem the the stage three endometriosis somebody will have told you that you have stage three endometriosis and therefore that
Person should advise you as to what’s the best method of getting pregnant for you good answer right we’ll just have one more question um before we show another video and do any existing conditions such as d diabetes impact on success of treatment yes always and that’s why it’s crucially important to particularly if
You have a a coexisting medical disorder like diabetes like hypothyroidism when you want to have a baby get advice from your endocrinologist or your GP very very quickly so even before you’re thinking about starting a family go to your GP and say look I’m a diabetic I want a
Baby what do I do I’m um hypothyroid or I’ve got rheumatoid arthritis or I’m overweight or I’m or I’m um I have um any other medical disorder tic colitis psoriasis anything that might be termed of chronic condition just go and and and see your
Doctor and say look I want a baby I need some uh preconception advice and we will they will readily give it to and if they can’t they can always put you in contact with somebody who can I.E us care fertility yeah great well thanks Charles that’s brilliant um so it’s time now to
Move to a a short video it’s been prepared by Sha our patient inquiry team leader and she’s going to tell you all about how to get started with care how we support you through the treatment and then we’ll hear from Dave who’s our CEO who’s going to briefly describe life at
Care and our d dedication to supporting you thank you I’m sha and I manage Care’s new patient inquiry team we’re here to make it easy for you to take your very first step in your fertility Journey we completely understand how nervous and excited you might be when you contact us
This is the start of a life-changing process and hopefully the beginning of an amazing future as a family so it’s really important that we give you all the information you need that way we can help you to feel much more comfortable and confident with your treatment whatever you need to talk
About I want to reassure you that no question is silly or trivial we appreciate that there might be a lot to taken at first but don’t worry we’ll send you a clear information pack about the treatments you’re interested in and we’re always here for any follow-up queries my team also
Manage inquiries about care pay our range of funding packages which are exclusive to care fertility patients when you’re ready we can book you a virtual consultation with a specialist fertility doctor from your local care clinic so if you want more information have a question or wish to book an
Appointment call my team we want you to know that we are here for you at every stage of your fertility Journey we say that our patients become part of our care family and it’s true we care deeply about you and your future and our teams
Are here to make sure you have all the support you need reason why we chose care was just one the care that they give you um the after care that they have available to you and the fact that they um offer different forms of um treatment um and they listen to you one
Thing that I’ve identified and what I’ve noticed when speaking to other um people that I’ve met within the infertility Community is there’s a lot of clinics out there that don’t necessarily listen to you as the patient it kind of a one- siiz fits all but with with care that
Didn’t seem to be the case at all they took everything into consideration and they listened um to your concerns they listened to you as a person and they put a a package and and a process in place that will help you and you know fingers crossed will give you that positive
Result from the end at the end of it without shadow of a doubt if I had to go through it again I would definitely go back to care oh the support at care was brilliant was brilliant yeah I mean the nurses were brilliant for us you feel so
Looked after looked after and cared by by the whole team we felt that they did care and it wasn’t just for them getting something out of it it was actually that ongoing support yeah and they wanted it to work for us care fertility started over 20 years
Ago with one clinic and the goal of helping patients achieve their dream of family through truly personal care and the most scientifically Advanced fertility treatments we’ve grown from that one Clinic we now have clinics across the UK and many people have become part of our care family with over
50,000 care babies in the world but one thing has and always will remain the same we care for each and every patient we care about your dreams of having a baby and we put our heart and soul into every aspect of what care can offer you to provide you with the best care
Possible possible and to give you your best chance of success in treatment we look to our own care family from our consultants embryologists and nurses to our admin teams and specialist fertility counselors we’ve also put a lot of thought into how we improve each and every step of your journey which will no
Doubt begin with lots of questions we know that thinking about starting IVF can be daunting for some and that’s why our care patient services and support teams will always be there for you whenever you have have a question need advice or simply want someone to talk to so that you feel
Completely confident and in control of your fertility options so yes we have grown and developed over the years but care and empathy are always at the heart of who we are we are passionate about changing lives and creating Futures and I hope that this shines through in
Everything we do and everyone you meet at all of our clinics we don’t just care we are care That was good so we’re coming to towards the end of the event but we’re going to leave you with a few final words about care and how you can get in touch and to learn more a book a consultation and don’t forget we’ll get back to you with
Any answers to your questions that we might not have got to this evening and the inquiry team are there till 8 o’clock this evening so thanks again and thanks for coming Charles been amazing been pleasure as informative as ever and thank you very much nice to see you
Alison see you soon pleasure see you soon bye-bye bye-bye everybody one in six people need help to grow their family you’re not alone and our care family will do everything we can to help your dream of family come true there are are over 50,000 care babies in the world today
And behind this success is our promise to make more heartfelt dreams of family become Reality by ensuring our care goes into everything we do for all our patients every single day you will receive truly individualized treatment a patient Centric approach with empathy at its heart we understand how nervous and
Excited you might be be about getting started but you can be assured of kindness empathy and all the information you need from our new patient inquiry team we are all here to make it easy for you to take your very first step in your fertility Journey call our team on 0800 564
2270 to learn more and book an appointment we don’t just care we are care