Interview With Clinical Director of FIV Marbella

 

Providing you with more information about IVF treatment in Spain, we are pleased to present an interview with the Clinical Director of FIV Marbella,  Enrique Criado.

 

Can you tell us what makes FIV Marbella unique? Why should patients decide to go to your clinic out of all the others in Spain?

We are situated in a privileged city, a unique setting offering patients the benefit of eliminating stress and making their treatment as relaxed as possible.

Another reason would be our belief in transferring embryos at blastocyst stage.

We have the latest equipment on the market. We have special incubators for blastocyst culture offering the additional advantage that their design allows an immediate recovery of the gases´ temperature after opening, which greatly enhances the culture conditions for embryos.  In normal incubators the temperature and gas loss after opening is so large that recovery time is longer meaning the culture conditions of embryos change, affecting their development and quality.

 

Can you explain a little more about the egg donation program that you run. How do you match up patients and donors? How many trips are required?  How successful has it been?

Patients are matched to their donors by blood groups and physical characteristics (hair/eye colour, race), this is done by our experienced medical team. We offer a one-to-one donor-patient cycle.

Given that we are in a very international city we have donors of all phenotypes, nationalities and races, therefore we have no waiting list for egg donation treatment.

All donors undergo extensive screening tests before being accepted at our clinic.They also have physical and psychological evaluations as stipulated by the Spanish Fertility Law.

We always recommend patients do treatment in 2 visits, offering the possibility of freezing a sperm sample at the first visit to reduce the time needed here at time of treatment.

Due to the selection of Blastocyst embryos with the greatest implementation potential, we also avoid unnecessary freezing of embryos by freezing only those embryos that reach blastocyst with optimal quality for freezing.

With this kind of work we manage to maintain high pregnancy rates in both fresh and frozen embryos as they are of excellent quality.

 

What advances in reproductive science do you think has had the biggest impact on success rates?

Without a doubt, blastocyst. Success rates have increased drastically as have single embryo transfers which then decreases the multiple birth rate. Our current accumulative* egg donation pregnancy rate transferring blastocyst embryos is 81%. (*fresh embryo transfer and any possible frozen transfers).

 

What support is available to patients who travel overseas to your clinic?

We over personalised patient care. Each patient that contacts FIV Marbella will have a coordinator from our International Department, their coordinator would be in constant contact with them throughout treatment at FIV Marbella, offering advice and assisting in the communication with our professionals, assuring complete comprehension of everything. We have coordinators speaking, Spanish, English, French, Arabic and Italian.

We can also assist in the preparation of their trip to Marbella, providing an accommodation close to our centre, organising any transport that would be necessary (airport-hotel-clinic) as we believe that planning their visit to an unknown city should not be a reason to worry.

 

Why should a patient decide to go to Marbella? Do you often find people combining their treatment with a holiday?

We find many patients decide to make a “holiday” out of the time they are here for treatment. Marbella enjoys an unusually pleasant micro-climate bringing marvellous weather. This is due to it’s position with the Mediterranean Sea and beach to the south and the Sierra Blanca mountain range behind it to the north. A truly fabulous sun-trap. Weather records show that the average temperature is 19º C and the sun shines for 320 days a year with only 45 days of rain.

Find out more about FIV Marbella including costs and success rates.