MedVacation Offers Comprehensive Chromosome Screening

Denver, CO, January 20, 2011 --(PR.com)-- Premier medical tourism services provider MedVacation announced today the addition of innovative new IVF service that dramatically improves implantation and live birth rates for fertility patients who have had multiple failed IVF cycles or several miscarriages.

A large number of unsuccessful IVF cycles can be attributed to the presence of numerical chromosomal abnormalities. Embryos derived from defective or aneuploid gametes stand little chance of forming a viable pregnancy.

Consequently, screening of embryos for chromosome abnormalities prior to embryo transfer can significantly improve pregnancy rates, decrease miscarriage rates, as well as reduce the risk of having a child with syndrome such as Down or Turner.

For over a decade, IVF clinics have relied on the Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis test to identify aneuploid embryos. However, PGD testing, which is based on a one-cell biopsy followed by fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH), permits less than half of the chromosomes to be screened. In addition, PGD does not detect chromosome breakage. Recent CGH studies show that between twenty and forty percent of all embryos carry chromosome abnormalities that could not be detected using FISH screens employed in conventional PGD. These chromosome abnormalities in human embryos can cause developmental arrest during the preimplantation phase, implantation failure and/or miscarriage.

The recently developed Comparative Genomic Hybridization (CGH) method allows our geneticists to identify the most viable euploid embryos. The process, however, is rather complex. The embryologists must obtain more than one cell for genetic analysis using CCS. This is possible only in later blastocyst stage. Difficulties arise when geneticists have to perform cell analysis which takes longer than six hours to complete. To overcome this problem, embryologists put blastocysts into a state of suspended development until genetic lab results become available. This is done by way of Vitrification, a rapid freezing and cryopreservation technique recently developed in Japan.

Although CCS is still experimental and undergoing clinical trials, the few IVF clinics which are running these trials are seeing major improvements in implantation and live birth rates between 75 and 85 percent. “We are thrilled to offer this ground breaking technology through our IVF partner clinics and hope to help many hopeful parents to realize their dreams of starting or expanding their families,” says the CEO of the company Taras Kuzin.

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