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Irish Wedding News

08/07/2014

Too Many Mistakes At Fertility Clinics – HFEA

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has said "too many" mistakes are being made at clinics.

In a report by the regulator, it found that one in 100 women had experienced an "adverse incident", but added that most would not have affected the woman's chances of having a baby.

Between 2010 and 2012, there were 1,679 adverse incidents in the UK's fertility clinics. Of these, three were classified as Grade-A category – the most serious incident.

It is understood that in one case, a woman was receiving fertility treatment using donated sperm. She wanted a child who would be genetically related to an older sibling, however sperm from the wrong donor was used. In order to protect the family's anonymity, no further details have been released.

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In the other grade-A cases, embryos were contaminated, probably with sperm, the report said. In the third adverse incident, sperm was removed from storage too soon. Over the same timeframe, there were 714 grade-B incidents, which involves issues such as the loss of embryos or malfunctioning equipment, and 815 grade-C incidents. These included errors where eggs had been left unusable or women's ovaries had been "over-stimulated" to produce eggs.

Commenting on the findings, Sally Cheshire, HFEA Chair, said: "We are committed to ensuring that clinics provide the safest and highest quality service to their patients. These results show that, in the main, clinics are doing a good job of minimising the number of serious errors, and this should be welcomed.

"While we do what we can to ensure IVF is error free, mistakes do sometimes happen, as they do in any area of medicine. What's most important is learning the lessons from errors made to minimise the chance of their happening again – this is not about naming and shaming."

"However," she added: "There remain too many grade C mistakes, such as breaches of confidentiality. As patients have often told us, these mistakes may be less serious at first glance but they can still be very upsetting.

"Clinics can and should be eradicating these sorts of avoidable errors, which will go a long way towards reducing patient distress and improving the overall experience of IVF treatment."

(JP/CD)

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"The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has said "too many" mistakes are being made at clinics."