Mind-blowing article on transferring of PGS-abnormal embryos

[Anonymous]

PP, what did you decide to do?

Forgive me for updating the same thing on multiple threads, but we decided not to PGS test this last batch. They froze 3 today which my doc said looked topnotch, and they are still watching another 3 (which aren't quite so pretty but maybe one will be freezable?). It was a very last minute decision but it felt like the right choice for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone here used PGS and then stopped because of articles like this? I've done PGS on 3 batches of blasts and ended up with one normal male each time - all 3 are still in the freezer. I'm on day 6 of stims of the last freeze-all cycle I will ever do and I am debated skipping the testing and just freezing any blasts (if we are lucky enough to get them). I'll be 44 in 6 weeks so this is my final attempt. (If this sounds familiar, I'm the OP of the fairly recent thread on AFC doubling.)

Our son, our only child, has ASD, and while I've love another son the risk of having a 2nd child with ASD is significantly less with a girl (though still a risk). But of the 9 blasts that we know of, 8 were males, of which 3 (plus my son) were normal chromosomally. My most recent cycle was the first time we ever had a female blast, though it was abnormal. I'm been trying to accept that we will likely only have male embryos to transfer, yet I fear I will be so much more anxious during a male pregnancy than a female one. So I am trying to weigh the risks on both sides here. If we do PGS we may not get any normals this cycle (or, if the pattern holds, get 1 normal male), and we could possibly be throwing away a female embryo with the potential to self-correct. On the other hand, if we skip PGS we could end up transferring an embryo with a trisomy and/or that requires a TFMR. There are risks with either choice and assuming that I make it to a live birth the odds are at least 80-90% that the baby would be chromosomally normal (and not have ASD), so I keep telling myself that I will roll the dice, but I have to admit that the thought of a 2nd special needs child of any kind terrifies me. I am leaning towards skipping the PGS testing but I need to talk with my husband and make a decision by Friday. I wish we could just test them and then make our own decision about whether to transfer an abnormal one, but my impression is that Shady Grove won't transfer any abnormals except mosaics, so my choices are either test or don't test. We had 4 blasts make it to freezing last time, and who knows what I'll get this time, but given my age it's not like I'm going to get 10 blasts that it will take 5 FETs to get through. Even if we get lucky I doubt it would take more than 2 FETs to use up all the blasts from this cycle.

The problem with this thinking is that when girls do have ASD, it is typically more severe. And ASD is thought to be genetic. Your chance of having another child with ASD is much higher than parents with one neurotypical ch ild. If you really don't want to have two kids with ASD, one potentially severe case since you would be deliberately transferring a female embryo, I wouldn't roll the dice again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone at a top clinic right now? CCRM, Cornell? I wonder what their take is on it.

Would also like to know. I cycled with CCRM last year and they did not all transfer of non-normals at that time.

Their website discussion of CCS suggests they don't believe mosaics are viable though:

"CCRM is aware that there are other IVF clinics and reference labs publicly reporting discrepancy with anueploid embryos (chromosomally abnormal). We want to assure our patients that our CCS lab runs at the highest level of expertise with strict quality control and data analysis to enable the accurate CCS diagnosis of IVF embryos. As part of our ongoing commitment to excellence, we routinely reconfirm diagnosis on aneuploid embryos to better understand the incidence of chromosome abnormality.

Recently we dual biopsied 90 aneuploid blastocysts (Day 5 embryos) and blindly analyzed the CCS results to reveal 96 percent accuracy. The remaining 4 percent were mosaic aneuploid embryos (containing both chromosomally normal and abnormal cells) that would never have resulted in a healthy live birth. This sampling is larger than any of the recent published studies."

https://www.ccrmivf.com/services/comprehensive-chromosome-screening-ccs/

It turns out all clinics turned this person down except CNY. Which disappoints me to hear. CNY helps a lot of people. They should not be helping crazy people. This person needed psych clearance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had two TFMRs. The only reason we are doing IVF is for PGS. No way would I knowingly transfer an abnormal embryo. TFMR was excruciating for us.

This person's prolife perspective is that babies with severe abnormalities should be born. Of the embryos she transferred 1 was T13 and survived 10 months the other supposedly wasn't but died suddenly at age 3.

It's also convenient that the state probably paid the $10 million NICU bill for that baby to die a slow, painful death.