Many women have frozen embryos they might elect to use in the future. The usual practice at most clinics is to freeze embryos at the blastocyst stage. Some may want pre-implantation genetic diagnosis or screening (PGD or PGS) of their embryos before future transfers. This testing might be desired for a variety of reasons, such as to rule out embryo aneuploidy and ensure the normal number of chromosomes are present, to improve success rates in selected patients, to eliminate a disease gene (like cystic fibrosis), or for gender selection.
Unfortunately, at this moment many clinics do not offer genetic testing of frozen/vitrified blastocysts. Genetic testing takes time, often about 24 hours to get results, and there is limited time after blastocyst thaw until the blastocyst must be transferred. Some clinicians may feel this time crunch is too constraining. We have thawed and then performed trophectoderm biopsy followed by array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) a modest number of patients, and the results are already very encouraging.
We have a viable method.
Frozen-thawed embryos can be shipped from one IVF center to another. Because of our high success rates with frozen embryos, The Fertility Center of Las Vegas frequently receives embryos and oocytes that were frozen at other centers. If your center does not yet offer genetic testing of thawed blastocysts, you may be able to have your center ship your embryos to The Fertility Center of Las Vegas so you can have this service. Please call The Fertility Center of Las Vegas at 702 254-1777 and ask to speak to an IVF coordinator.
