A SCOTS woman who became the first to conceive using a breakthrough IVF technique has given birth to a girl.
Baby Eva was born in Glasgow on Tuesday, thanks to the cutting-edge early embryo viability assessment (Eeva) technique.
Parents Susan Walker-Dempster and David Dempster took their three-day-old to visit staff at Glasgow Centre for Reproductive Medicine (GCRM) yesterday.
The centre's medical director, Dr Marco Gaudoin, said: "This is the biggest development in IVF over the last five years. There's no question about that."
The system uses time-lapse imaging to monitor embryos while they are being incubated, and then uses computer software to select the potentially healthiest embryos.
Images taken at five-minute intervals by computer tell clinicians which embryos are most likely to become a healthy baby.
In standard IVF, embryos are removed from the incubator once a day to be examined under a microscope.
The technology to see cell division happening had not existed before the development of Eeva, whose system is similar to the time-lapse imaging used by other fertility clinics, but produces images every five minutes as opposed to every 10 to 20, and the results are analysed by computer rather than by clinician.
The Dempsters, of Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire, were the first to conceive using the technique in September last year.
Mrs Walker-Dempster, 35, said: "We came to GCRM and were asked by the embryologist if we wanted to use this Eeva system just before I went into theatre.
"We didn't actually read all the information as you should, but it's not intrusive and we thought it wouldn't do any harm, so we signed up for it – and here we are today with Eva."
The couple told no-one except their parents that they were using the new treatment, which was developed at Stanford University.
And the Dempsters had always planned to call their baby Eva if it was a girl and insisted she was not named after the IVF treatment.
The clinic is the first in Scotland, and only the second in Europe, to offer the system to patients, who must pay £850 on top of the £4000 cost of IVF treatment.
Dr Gaudoin added: "It cost us a lot of money to invest in it, but we thought it was the right thing to go for and we've been very encouraged with what's happened so far."
please do a generic web caption not specific to one pic for this. Thanks.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article