November 2009: IUI treatment cycle cancellations

As many of you will have realised the medical staffing of the IVF clinic has been depleted since the summer by maternity leave and promotion with no agreement from the management of the directorate to backfill the posts . Dr Jose and I have been maintaining all IVF and IUI treatment cycles until now with the great help of the nurses, and have also been running the clinics - often at the same time. The centre and the management team of the hospital directorate now feel that in the interests of safety of the patients, we will temporarily have to reduce some activity. As IUI cycles are quite complex in terms of scans, drugs, and management of complications, and as we are ahead in the number of IUI cycles that are commissioned by the local health boards this year, we felt that suspension of the IUI service temporarily, would have be the best solution. We appreciate that for those of you awaiting the start of a cycle, this is dreadfully disappointing, but we can only manage a specific number of cycles safely, given our current staffing, and it would be wrong to try and do more than we can. Hopefully this situation will be rectified in the New Year as we have 2 new doctors now working with us now who are being introduced to the clinic.

Once again apologies to anyone affected and we will be letting you know when the we can start treatments again. Please leave your contact number s with us if you are affected.

Janet Evans 

IVFWALES NEW YEAR NEWSLETTER - 2009 

We thought it would be good this year to write the IVF Wales newsletter now for two reasons;

Firstly because it means that all of us at IVF Wales can wish you all Best Wishes for the New Year and secondly because there are lots of things happening at the moment that we would like to share with you.

It has been another successful year here for many couples, with pregnancy rates for IVF running at 40%, and for ICSI 43% for under 35year olds The vitrification programme - the new way of storing embryos, has continued very successfully with excellent rates of embryos surviving the thaw, and our first babies hitting the national papers in August 2008 with lots of well earned praise for our Embryology Team. In addition, we have started vitrifying eggs for single ladies with cancer and also for ladies wishing to conserve fertility

We have been busy looking at our processes to see if we can be more efficient with our resources and offer you a better service and hopefully we will see benefits from that later in the New Year. We are aware that our Administration Team are particularly stretched and to help them we have a new IT system being implemented in the next few months, hopefully without too many teething problems.

The building work is still continuing in the Women’s Unit with new Antenatal clinics and delivery facilities together with Gynaecology facilities moving back to the UHW site. We hope to have a new corridor in this Unit for our use and have been looking at the plans recently. Unfortunately this will not be for at least another 18 months so we will all have to continue to live with our temporary home in Suite 2 for a bit longer, which is situated in Main Outpatients between the Concourse and the Pharmacy.

A few months ago the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority raised the issue of reducing multiple pregnancy rates in the UK, which are recognised to be partly due to assisted conception. Multiple pregnancy is known to cause excess risk to both mums and babies, with prematurity, breathing problems and cerebral palsy all being more common in twins and caesarean sections; haemorrhage and pre eclampsia being more common in mums. In view of this they have asked all clinics to devise their own strategy to bring down their multiple rates to 24% in 2009 and eventually less than 10%. This will mean couples at increased risk of twins choosing to have a single embryo transfer.

Many areas in England have recognised that there will be savings from reduced Special Care Baby Units costs and argued for increased IVF cycles. As a result many PCTs, ( the English version of our Local Health Boards) are now offering 2 cycles and some 3 (including Scotland), which is the full implementation of NICE recommendations published in 2005.

Currently the Infertility Network UK (INUK) are campaigning on your behalf with the Assembly members of the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) and would welcome your support as they feel that Wales should be offering as good a service as the rest of the UK and not being left behind as may otherwise happen.

We are in the process of a series of meetings with Health Commissioning Wales – the arm of the WAG which at present organises IVF in Wales. This is the first time we have met as a group since the implementation of one cycle in Wales in 2005, when the eligibility criteria for IVF were set up. There are obviously a lot of issues that have arisen since then, which need addressing.

• We will be discussing how WAG plan to offset the effects of reducing the multiple pregnancy rates and the consequent increasing rates of elective single embryo transfer (eSET). Currently they have offered all frozen embryo cycles to be funded rather than the current one frozen cycle, but no increase in fresh IVF / ICSI cycles.
• We will be discussing the possible setting up of a Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) NHS service here in Wales to save those couples needing this treatment having to travel to Nottingham or London. PGD is for couples whose children are at high risk of a genetic problem and enables the embryos to be tested in an IVF cycle before transfer. This would also mean that we could offer self funded embryo screening for couples at increased risk of chromosomal problems e.g. Downs’s syndrome and those with recurrent miscarriage.
• We will be discussing the availability of donor eggs for NHS patients now that sources of altruistic donors are almost non existent.
• We will be discussing the provision of an NHS egg vitrification service for single ladies with cancer, as currently already exists in parts of the UK, as we feel that the evidence now exists to show that this technique is successful and should no longer be considered developmental.
• We have recently heard that WAG are planning to completely reorganise the health services in Wales and dissolve the central commissioning of IVF – this could mean a disjointed, unequal service, as we would have to work with 7 Local Health Boards across Wales. If you have thoughts about this – again contact INUK or local contacts.

We all have a busy time ahead and will be working with other providers on your behalf to improve the service that we can offer and I will keep you updated on the web site with the outcomes of discussions.

Once again Best wishes for the New Year,

All at IVF Wales. 
           

Acupunture / Complementary Therapy

IVFWales are pleased to announce our partnership with the The Natural Health and Fertility Clinic in Whitchurch Cardiff, www.thenaturalhealthandfertilityclinic.com for those patients who feel they may benefit from the addition of complementary therapy such as acupuncture.

The clinic was founded by clinical director, Jacqueline Brown, whose achievements in fertility led her to set up a centre of excellence providing complementary healthcare for women of all ages. After many years successfully treating a variety of women’s health issues and increasingly specialising in fertility and gynaecological problems, Jacqueline recognised the need to offer a more holistic natural approach.

Jacqueline has brought together an all female team. Her small number of therapists are highly qualified and hand picked for their high standard of work, caring attitude and commitment to providing an integrated approach to complementary  healthcare. 

One of the IVFWales team, Dr Arianna D'Angelo, Consultant Gynaecologist, Fertility Specialist and clinical lecturer at Cardiff University can be seen at the clinic for patients seeking Fertility Investigations and also general gynaecology and ultrasound. 

My Body Clock Clinic

Mr Tony Griffiths one of IVFWales Consultant Gynaecologists has began running a 'Bodyclock' clinic for women concerned about their potential fertility and ovarian reserve. This new service is the first of its kind in Wales - a chance for women to find out how much time they have left on their biological bodyclock. Those with low 'ovarian reserve' who are concerned about their future fertility can then either start trying for a baby or explore the option of freezing their eggs at IVFWales until the time is right. For further information visit www.mybodyclock.net

Vitrification Birth! 

July 2008: IVFWales are pleased to announce our first birth with  embryos 'frozen' with a new technique to the clinic called 'Vitrification'. With the technique we are enabled to freeze eggs and embryos by turning them into a 'glass-like' structure. By doing this, embryos are far more likely to survive freezing than by older 'conventional' methods used in most othrer clinics in the UK and around the world. We are offering the technique in response to fantastic pregnancy results from vitrification in Japan and the USA.

Birth in HIV couple!

IVFWales are pleased to be the first clinic in Wales to announce a pregnancy from a couple where the male partner is HIV+. In a designated area of the clinic and by using a special 'washing' technique we were able to remove the HIV virus from the sperm sample. We then tested it to confirm it was HIV- before using it for a fertility treatment resulting in the birth of a healthy HIV- baby.

Egg Freezing 

Many of you may have read the article in the Sunday Times on September 2nd, 2007 titled 'Egg freezing now available to all women'. The article discussed two of Britain’s leading fertility clinics launching new egg freezing programmes designed for women with cancer who's cancer treatment may cause infertility or women who wish to postpone motherhood to pursue a career or find the right partner. This is all possible by a breakthrough in freezing technology that almost eliminates the risk of damage to eggs and embryos. IVFWales is pleased to announce that we began 'Vitrifiying' in August 2007 and currently offer vitrification of eggs for oncology patients.