ESHRE’s second Campus meeting with ‘live’ participants post-lockdown was organised by the SIG Embryology. The three-day event pursued the analogy of ‘haute cuisine’ in the techniques, skills and service of the IVF laboratory.

A Campus meeting in October organised by ESHRE’s SIG Andrology and the Male Reproductive Health Initiative will address the diagnostic and treatment gaps in male infertility and present a blueprint for improvement. Chris Barratt, a founding member of the MRHI, talks to Focus on Reproduction about the meeting and about the present status of male reproductive health.

Debates over the benefits of add-on treatments continue to be heard, with evidence slowly accumulating towards consensus for some. An online conference organised by the Progress Education Trust heard more about developments, including details of ESHRE’s forthcoming guideline.

A Campus workshop on the long-term impact of ART on the physical and psycho-social well-being of patients and children conceived through ART was held online in December; updates, from different perspectives, were largely reassuring.

A very well organised and well attended webinar series hosted by ESHRE on the ‘Essentials in Reproductive Medicine’ was completed in mid-May with a webinar focused on ‘Management of a PGT-A cycle’. Efthymia Constantinou, Junior Deputy of the SIG Reproductive Genetics, reports.

A Campus meeting in April focused on many of the recommendations in the newly updated ESHRE guideline on endometriosis, and included associations with cancer risk, pain and infertility, and the role of surgery in their management.

A new position paper from the European Society of Human Genetics has described the selection of embryos based on polygenic risk scores as unethical practice, insisting that patients must be properly informed on the limitations of PRS and its reliability for predicting genetically complex diseases. ESHRE shares these concerns.

The first Campus meeting to be held with ‘live’ participants for two years covered the luteal phase in ART, from progesterone measurement to luteal support to implantation and how to improve it, and finally to pregnancy outcome. As ever, there were many questions raised, but rarely answers supported by strong evidence.

Against a background of evidence that people have limited knowledge about factors which affect fertility, including age, the International Fertility Education Initiative, now associated with ESHRE’s SIG Global and Socio-cultural Aspects of Infertility, is developing a wider international platform for the promotion of fertility awareness and preconception health through public education and research.

A country-by-country review of policies and funding in ART finds that only four of 43 countries surveyed are rated as ‘excellent’ according to a nine-point list of treatment criteria; Fertility Europe and the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights call for a ‘game-changing’ shift in policies.