Together. All the way.

This year, San Antonio was the place to be when participating in the annual meeting of ASRM. Similar to previous years, professionals from all over the world gathered to present or listen to the latest scientific developments in the field of assisted reproduction. We have collected our thoughts and reflections of the scientific content of the meeting in this blog post. 

Lab Director and co-owner Dr. Oliver Sterthaus at Fertisuisse in Switzerland built a completely new IVF clinic in 2014 with his colleagues. When setting up the new lab, convenience and workflow were important factors, and therefore they decided to use the dynamic Octax NaviLase laser system for all laser procedures. Watch his story here. 

Vitrification has in recent years become the cryopreservation method of choice, with high survival rates and developmental potential of oocytes and embryos similar to fresh ones. Yet there are challenges to overcome, both for the oocyte and embryo and for the embryologist. In this recorded webinar Dr. Ann-Helene Jakobsson will give you insight into how to succeed with vitrification. 

“Maintaining the correct temperature is a critical environmental factor for gametes and embryos and needs to be carefully monitored. You must be aware of confounders as hot and cold spots on warming plates, laminar hood or ventilation flows and open or closed lid to ensure a safe working temperature”, says Jan Gunst, clinical embryologist at the public IVF clinic at AZ Sint-Jan in Bruges, Belgium. Watch his story here.

This year, Geneva was the place to be when participating in the annual meeting of ESHRE. Similar to previous years, professionals from all over the world gathered to present or listen to the latest scientific developments in the field of assisted reproduction as well as to meet with colleagues. 

During the Vitrolife Scientific Symposium at ESHRE 2017, we had the pleasure of listening to three international experts in the field of human IVF sharing their experience in laboratory management, morphokinetics and cryobiology. We are confident that information from these presentations will assist you in not only in improving your workflow, but will help you to maximise the success of each cycle of IVF performed.

Many clinics have seen the benefit of making time-lapse a standard of care for their patients. The same is true for Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS). The fact that there are two such widely implemented techniques has created some questions about which new technology will offer the best treatment options for improving clinical outcome. In this webinar Dr. Tine Qvistgaard Kajhøj shows how time-lapse and PGS can be used together to offer the best overall possibility for improving outcomes and clinical workflow.

The routine use of follicle flushing during oocyte pick-up varies a lot between clinics. If flushing is used, there are many alternative solutions. At Vitrolife we are constantly working to improve our products and services and one way of doing this is to get a better understanding of user behaviour during certain procedures. We were interested in the use of heparin during flushing and sent a survey to the IVF community. Here is the result.

Once again we can look back on the biggest event in the IVF community - the Annual Meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology. More than 10 000 people gathered in Helsinki, Finland to gain new scientific information, meet with colleagues and friends as well as explore the exhibit for new products and technologies. As usual, the scientific program is a mix of invited sessions, free communications, posters and sponsored activities. In this blog post we will make an attempt to summarise our reflections from this year’s ESHRE.

In connection to a recent post on the benefits of consistent annotation we invited readers to take a short survey on the use of annotations in their time-lapse software. Thanks to all of you who answered – here are the results.