Topics in this third review of embryology sessions from the oral presentation programme in Vienna include the timing of embryo transfer, extended embryo culture, paternal age, embryo arrest, and the effect of trophectoderm morphology grade - from Session 78.

Vienna session organised by a 'priority setting partnership' for infertility unveils ten priorities for research in the four key areas: male infertility, female and unexplained infertility, assisted reproduction and the ethics of treatment.

There is now a long catalogue of inconclusive studies investigating an association between ART and risk of ovarian cancer. A large-scale multicentre analysis reported in Vienna concluded that nulliparity rather than ART is the likely explanation for any link. Results were described as 'reassuring'.

Fertility as much as any other discipline in medicine is subject to over-exaggerated claims of popular reporting. Scientists should take care how they present their data.

In this second review of embryology sessions in Vienna, we report from a selected oral communications session on time-lapse imaging. Six speakers presented their data on embryo assessment using various morphokinetic parameters to support their predictive value in embryo selection for transfer.

Substantial heterogeneity exists in the reporting of outcomes of fertility trials, with inconsistencies in numerators, denominators and definitions making results difficult to interpret, compare and combine in meta-analyses. Jack Wilkinson presented the rationale for a core outcome set of measures for fertility trials on behalf of the Cochrane Gynaecology and Fertility Group and the COMMIT initiative in Vienna.

The benefits are being exaggerated and the costs underestimated by those promoting aneuploidy testing to clinics and patients. An exchange session with the ASRM urges caution.

Fertilisation was the subject of an invited session eloquently bringing to life its very beginnings. Two outstanding speakers reviewed events documented in research and clinical laboratories covering the fusion of gametes and the 24 hours thereafter.

Conventional semen analysis according to WHO manual parameters is limited, with no consideration of testis function or sperm quality. Madelon Van Wely of the Academic Medical Centre University of Amsterdam reviewed current evidence in support of sperm DNA fragmentation testing in ART.

Goodbye to PR per ET? Professor Cindy Farquhar from the Cochrane Fertility & Gynecology group on plans to improve the quality of evidence in reproductive medicine and introduce core outcome measures of live birth in adequately powered studies.