Position Statement
Published: 10/10/2020 at 12:44 PM
10 OCTOBER 2020: Today, the Herald Sun published an article revealing that an Australian IVF clinic has had issues with their non-invasive pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS) that may have resulted in a small number of healthy embryos being incorrectly classified as abnormal and therefore being discarded.
Non-Invasive PGS analyses the culture medium, in which the embryo grows, to test for chromosomal abnormalities such as Downs syndrome, without biopsy of the embryo itself.
Genea reassures patients that we have never and do not provide non-invasive PGS. Genea Scientific Director, Steven McArthur says, “we were not confident in the accuracy of non-invasive PGS and therefore have not offered it to our patients.” He added, “our PGS involves safely removing a small number of cells from the embryo at the blastocyst stage. This technique was developed by Genea in the early 2000s and is now accepted as the gold standard for any genetic testing required on embryos.”
“I have every confidence in our PGS and encourage patients to continue to use our world leading genetic screening techniques as recommended by their doctor.”