PGD

Generally, doctors recommend PGD in the following cases:

• If the woman is over 35 years old (increased chance of delivering a child with trisomy);
• Several failed IVF attempts;
• Multiple miscarriages;
• Certain types of male infertility that involve chromosomal abnormalities;
• The presence of chromosomal rearrangements, inversions, translocations, or other chromosomal abnormalities.

In any case, at our GMS IVF Family Planning Center, we strongly recommend PGD «by default» since most of our in vitro fertilization programs already include basic genetic abnormality exams for embryos. There are some key reasons to choose this procedure.

Unfortunately, fertility problems that involve genetic abnormalities are quite common. Due to this fact, patients are forced to resort to IVF to conceive must pay special attention to genetics.

Let’s be honest: how often are we completely sure that we know everything about our genetics or even our family genetics? Beyond that, what about the «genetic health» of our partner? Basically, deciding to undergo IVF is an indication that a child is something you’ve wanted for a long time. This is why we strive to exclude unnecessary risks for this child while saving valuable time from being wasted on useless attempts with an unfortunate result. It’s better to spend the time on looking for a way to get what you’ve been longing for.

That being said, as much as we recommend this critical service for IVF, we also want this procedure to be accessible to all patients. We don’t make money from the medical procedures involving collecting cells for embryonic screening. The price of PGD is as low as possible for our patients.

For patients with different financial situations, we have two different ways to complete the preimplantation genetic diagnosis available: comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) method and the NGS method. Without getting technical, the second method can be described as more precise because each nucleotide is examined, but this also makes the price higher. Basic PGD, included in the Basic IVF program at the GMS IVF Clinic, is performed by doing a trophectoderm biopsy on the 5th day of embryonic growth and examines 46 chromosomes (22 couples of autosomes+ heterochromosomes).

As previously mentioned, PGD is only available for those who plan to undergo in vitro fertilization. We recommend Prenetics in the following cases: if other methods of assisted reproduction (for example, artificial or intrauterine insemination) have been used, if PGD was not included in your IVF program for any reason, and, of course, if insemination was successful. Compared to traditional genetic tests for embryos, the most important characteristics of this test are that:

• it’s not invasive (i.e. bioassay test is performed without «touching» or damaging the embryo);
• it can be done during the early weeks of pregnancy (starting from the 9th-10th week);
• results are extremely accurate (more than 99%).

The Prenetics test only requires 20 ml of the future mother’s blood like most biochemical analyses. After that, experts examine the DNA in a lab and learn the chance of fetal chromosomal abnormalities from the results. This test specifically examines the DNA of the baby which means it’s a direct diagnostic test and not a «Double Marker Test» (biochemical blood test and ultrasound). This test identifies chromosomal abnormalities with a high level of accuracy.