How do find out if your fertility clinic has ever had an embryo mix-up?
IVF is stressful enough without having to worry whether your fertility clinic could be making a mistake. Embryo mix-ups can and do happen, however. Imagine being informed that you are finally pregnant – but with another woman’s baby! Or imagine that you get a call with the information that your embryos were implanted into someone else’s uterus. For most of us this sounds like nothing more than a horrible nightmare. But, although embryo mix-ups are rare, they do take place sometimes. How do you find out if your fertility clinic has ever had an embryo mix-up?
No fertility clinic who has gone through such a horror would shout this fact from the roof tops. Nobody wants to scare off potential clients, and fertility clinics are no different to other companies in that they would probably rather hide their mistakes from the general public. However, if you ask direct questions, you should get the information you need. What if you find out that the clinic you were considering for IVF has had embryo mix-ups in the past? Should that automatically disqualify them from your selection process?
No, I think, but you should find out in great detail what happened and what your fertility clinic is doing to ensure that such tragedies will not take place in the future. A past embryo mix-up should make you very cautious, but fertility experts rightfully point out that, where there are humans, there is room for human error. A quick look into what happened at past embryo mix-ups reveals that improper labeling of embryos, or two clients with similar family names, are usually a part of the error. Ask your fertility clinic whether they use electronic tracking using unique radiofrequency tags. Such systems have been introduced recently in the United Kingdom with great success. When an embryo is taken to the wrong place, alarms physically start ringing.
ALso take a look at, How to stop embryo mix-ups from happening to you? and for a real-life story of an embryo mix-up, read – How likely are embryo mix-ups to happen at your fertility clinic?
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While and embryo mix up is a catastrophic event, it is exceedingly rare. Certainly asking your clinic if this has happened to them is a good start. Such issues may result in legal action which could be reported on the State Board of Medicine website.
Everyone wants to have perfection and each IVF facility will do everything in their power to achieve such standards. With hundred of thousands of procedures done throughout the world, the fact is that and embryo mix up is an extraordinarily event. I can honestly think of no single action created by humans that has such a low error rate.
I totally agree with the idea of not only asking if such an event has occurred but if it did, what asking what steps had the facility taken to make sure it didn’t happen again. “Once and accident, twice a fool” comes to mind.
We are human but strive to be more. If such human error occurs, please be forgiving as it was never done with intent and was a rare thing, indeed.