Tell me about Mini-IVF
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Anonymous
| Is the monitoring process the same, just with less meds? What is the cost difference? |
Anonymous
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Depends on where you are looking at doing this and if your insurance covers meds (in terms of price difference).
My DW was accepted into a clinical trial at New Hope Fertility in NYC back in 2012 - the study compared mini to traditional IVF. Because it was a clinical trial, everything was free. We only had to pay for travel. This clinic offers mini and traditional IVF for nearly the same cost now, though I think mini is a bit cheaper. In our experience, the monitoring was basically the same. We live in DC and stayed in NYC for about a week or so during the time when she was about to have her egg retrieval. Each morning she went in for monitoring. She took (if I remember correctly) low doses of Follistim and Clomid. There was a trigger, but it was a nasal mist. We ended up with one embryo, which we froze and transferred two months after retrieval - he's now our 2.5 y/o DS. We have since worked with Shady Grove, and our doctor there took the complete opposite approach - high doses of a lot of meds. The cycle that yielded two embryos (Fall 2014) resulted in one loss at 17 weeks due to abnormalities, and the other "normal" embryo (we did PGS) didn't take. After two more failed cycles at SG with no embryos making it to day 5, we decided to consult with other clinics. We're currently working with Cornell, and our doctor is planning a cycle with much lower doses, co-culture, and a three day transfer. For what it's worth, we keep up with the other women who took part in that trial - there is a FB page. I would say nearly everyone who was in the mini IVF arm of the study had at least one successful pregnancy - many had embryos left over and returned or plan to return for their second cycle. The study will be published soon, but it's our understanding that mini is proven to be just as effective as traditional IVF (of course that can vary from one person to another, as is the case for all medical procedures). Best of luck, OP. |
Anonymous
| OP here - thank you for this info. I've been done two full IVF cycles with GW. I have no insurance benefits for this so I'm entirely OOP. My issue seems to be egg quality. I'm running out of money and I had heard that mini-IVF can produce better results and cost less, but I wasn't sure how it really worked. |
Anonymous
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I'm the PP - we're also entirely OOP. We stayed with SG for so long because we were in shared risk. But it got to the point where we just had to do something else. DW's issue is also egg quality. That's why co-culture and 3 day transfer sounded like a reasonable plan to us. We're taking the money we got back from SG shared risk and putting it toward what will hopefully be one successful cycle at Cornell.
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Anonymous
| I'm not really sure what mini IVF is, but I did Naturak Cycle IVF. There were no drugs except for progesterone and a trigger. The monitoring is the same. The actual retrieval procedure is the same except they are only getting one egg. I didn't have anesthesia for it. |
Anonymous
| ^^ PP here. Total cost was about $5300, I believe. That included ISCI. |
Anonymous
| What'a the difference between a mini IVF and a natural cycle IVF? |
Anonymous
That was addressed in this thread. You Stim (with meds) in mini IVF. Natural cycle is no meds. |
Anonymous
| Also re: the difference between mini and natural cycle -- with mini you do generally get multiple eggs. I am the wife of 13:19. Though we did end up with one blast, we started out with 7 eggs retrieved. If you are DOR or borderline like myself, you might really benefit from less stims. 2/3 of my traditional IVF cycles, I got pretty much the same number of eggs as I did on my mini cycle, and got a baby out of it. If you pay for your meds OOP, you also stand to save a ton of money. |
Anonymous
OP here - I have plenty of eggs, they're just crappy. My meds were 2K-3K each time, but it's the clinic that's the big expense. If that cost would be more or less the same it's not going to be much cheaper. I'd only do it if there was a good chance that they'd be able to coax out any good eggs that I have left. |
Anonymous
Well, you don't have to do full mini IVF, but I do think that lower stims generally result in higher quality eggs. The protocol that Cornell is about to have me on is not exactly mini IVF, just much, much lower stims than what SG was throwing at me. |
Anonymous
NP. How is mini different from traditional IVF then? Less meds? |
Anonymous
| How low are the dosages for mini? |
Anonymous
Yes, way less meds, and less injections in particular. If I recall, I had 3-4 low dosage follistim injections total (the rest was just clomid). I was the PP at New Hope, and they actually outline their general protocol nicely on their site: http://www.newhopefertility.com/ivf/mini-ivf/ Apparently they now do a "micro" IVF too, which is interesting. |
Anonymous
I want to say I did injections of 75 IU Follistim (3-4 times), plus clomid for quite a few days. |