Almost four years after ESHRE and Alpha Scientists reported their indicators for laboratory performance in ART, a new consensus has now been published by an ESHRE working group on indicators of clinical performance in ART.

Consensus from a lively coffee-break at the Annual Meeting concluded that abnormally fertilized oocytes can be rescued for clinical use and result in healthy live births. Efthymia Constantinou, Junior Deputy from the SIG Reproductive Genetics, reports.

With fertility rates in most developed countries now at their lowest ever level, one Thursday presentation at this meeting asked what many are thinking: can ART compensate for these declining fertility rates and the continued postponement of childbearing.

While an opening day invited presentation concluded that outcome was improved with a greater number of oocytes cryopreserved, Ana Cobo warned that success rates would also depend on the patient population and diagnostic background.

The latest impact factors, calculated for 2020 and released at the end of June, find Human Reproduction Update once again leading by far the categories of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, while Human Reproduction and Molecular Human Reproduction both make further gains.

With the slides produced a few days in advance of this Annual Assembly of Members, the Society’s Chair, Cristina Magli, in presenting ESHRE’s 2021 report via a live link was able to update members on registrations for the annual meeting, which stood at 9244 for the main programme and 3021 for the precongress courses. The Chair said she was ‘absolutely happy’ with these registrations and expressed her gratitude to all who had made the meeting possible.

With more than 9000 participants registered to attend remotely, this year’s annual meeting began as ever with its two keynote lectures, the first based on Human Reproduction’s most downloaded recent paper and the second on emerging techniques to extend the reproductive function of the ovary.

A survey of more than 1500 IVF patients in Australia has found that most had used adjunct treatments alongside their standard treatment – and usually at additional cost.

The potential of artificial intelligence in many of the IVF lab’s processes was a recurring theme in some of the 1300 abstracts submitted for inclusion in this year’s Annual Meeting. In an invited session embryologist Nikica Zaninovic from Cornell summarised how AI is already changing the way babies are made.

Preliminary data reported by European and global monitoring groups see success rates stable but frozen cycles continuing to rise as a proportion of total treatments; globally, 22% of all aspirations were for a freeze-all cycle.