Is CCS worth $5,000?

pblge

My brand new, fancy-pants RE strongly recommends CCS for all IVF patients, and we have no coverage for it. Do you think it's worth this much money?

pblge

Could some of the folks who are voting "Depends" please explain your reasons? Thanks!

Rebecca'sMama

We are hopefully doing CCS. My RE and I talked about it a lot, and he gave me some data on it. He felt that it wouldn't be worth it if I had fewer than 10 eggs retrieved, so we are using that as a guideline.It was worth it to us to minimize chance of transferring embryos that would be miscarried. We really want to do an eSET, so with CCS, we have a better shot of a take home baby. A bonus is that we could potentially choose the gender, which would be nice for family balancing, but we certainly wouldn't have done it for that purpose. Fortunately, neither of us are carriers for major genetic disorders, but if we were, it would be a no brainer.

 A friend of mine and her husband are both carriers for cystic fibrosis. They did IVF with CCS to ensure they only transferred embryos that wouldn't have CF. They tested 8 embryos and the two that looked the "best" ended up to have CF. They transferred one that would be a carrier but not have the disease and one that wasn't even a carrier and had boy/girl twins.

Ham113

I think it depends.  I would love to do it, for the reasons stated above, but if I only have a few embryos then I don't know if it's worth it (in fact, my RE basically said so). For me, it would also depend on where I am at - how many IVFs have I done, have I had repeat losses, and also am I completely OOP or basically covered except for the CCS.  If I get to the point where I've had multiple failed IVFs plus several unexplained losses, I'd do it. 

scooteriste

I voted "depends" because I think I would want to have a certain number of embryos as a threshold for going forward with testing. I was told by my last RE that it wouldn't be worth it because we would never have enough embryos to risk attrition due to biopsy. I'm torn, I don't want to have another loss but I also don't want to take the risk.

jaztastic

I voted depends... If your genetics screening came back normal, maybe taking the $5k plunge is not for you at this time, especially if you are in the beginning of a IVF treatments. However, if you only have say 1 shot to make it work and the money wasn't a huge issue, or if you know you/SO are carriers for a genetic issue then yes it's worth it.

Irishlove16

I would recommend asking this poll maybe on PAIF or SAIF boards to see if the testing benefited those who then got pregnant and had successful pregnancies following the cycle with the testing! Just a thought ;-)

ksgsmu

After a loss I want to make sure I am transferring a genetically heathy embryo... The price is steep but if you consider the heartbreak of a loss and additional cost for Another FET it made sense to us to do it. We are even using donor eggs and still doing pgd.

pblge

@Irishlove16‌ - good idea!! Done.

I'm realizing that I'm not sure what CCS (as opposed to PGD) can detect. Is it just aneuploidy? Could it also find microdeletions or translocations? I know it can't detect bad alleles for a gene. :-/

SKLH

I chose depends b/c we chose CGH (CCS) tesing for different rreasons then some other people. Basically this was a way to diagnosis our problem. I kept having failed cycles. After 1 or 2 cycles you can't keep blaming the embryos. It starts to make you wonder if it was ALWAYS a bad embryo or was it me? After transferring 6 embryos (in 3 cycles) we started fresh with a new clinic and tested the emrbyos. I had NO Idea what to expect b/c with my track record they would all be anormal? Well, out of 9... 6 were normal so it was nice to know we didn't transfer those 3 that were abnormal. Now I know with 97% certainty that when I transfer a embryo if it doesn't take it's highly likely that it's a problem with my uterus not necessarly the embryo since that embryo as been screened. Now, my recent transfer was a checmical so I am literally in limbo trying to figure out what THAT means but truthfully htat little embryo grew more in my uterus than any others have. I just think the CGH testing depends on your case. After all I've been through, I will NEVER do a IVF cycle withouth CGH testing again.

CallaLily30

We chose to do it because we have had four m/cs prior to IVF.  We did two ERs and all 4 that made it to blast were "normal."  It's comforting to know that we can make normal embryos. 

I'm hoping it will prevent more future heartbreak.  Our first FET of a "normal" blast ended in a BFN though so maybe the issue isn't the embryos.