{"id":157,"date":"2018-07-25T10:07:31","date_gmt":"2018-07-25T09:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=157"},"modified":"2018-07-25T10:07:31","modified_gmt":"2018-07-25T09:07:31","slug":"eshre-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=157","title":{"rendered":"ESHRE 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At the beginning of this month, I had the pleasure of attending one of the biggest conferences on reproduction, organized by the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). The ESHRE 2018 annual meeting took place in Barcelona, so, needless to say, I was brimming with excitement not only for the tens of presentations I was going to attend, but also for the amazing location (bonus: the venue was a 10 minute walk from one of Barcelona\u2019s amazing beaches). Sun and beaches aside, the conference was interesting, well organized, and impressive in size and breadth. As a sociologist, I have gotten used to smaller conferences, so I was in for quite the treat: ESHRE had a record attendance this year of almost 12,000! It can be easy to get overwhelmed, but I was there with a purpose: to learn more about the current uses of time-lapse and about social aspects of infertility, more generally.<\/p>\n

Time-lapse<\/strong><\/p>\n

Without a doubt, the meeting has confirmed that time-lapse is being used for research in many ways, perhaps more than was initially anticipated by anyone. Time-lapse tools allow embryologists and researchers to study the myriad of factors that can potentially influence pregnancy outcomes. Although add-ons have been portrayed as controversial in the UK media (Most still are: see, for example, recent headlines about the endometrial scratch), it seems to me that time-lapse has nonetheless been integrated into research practices. A number of authors have used time-lapse imaging as data that can generate new knowledge about how to pick the best embryo. We can now look at factors such as fragments, vacuoles, and even type of embryo movement, categorize these phenomena and conduct fairly large studies on outcome correlation, as panels at ESHRE have shown. Of note for me was Dr. Cristina Hickman\u2019s presentation on the multiple uses of time-lapse machines in clinics around the world. Interestingly, she stressed how different labs have integrated this technology to different degrees, showing how introducing new ways of looking at embryos (including selection algorithms) is a process that needs significant work on the part of professionals \u2013 work that, however, many say is worth doing in the end. Our own work on time-lapse was represented in the digital poster area, where I was delighted to see many scroll through our summary of preliminary findings.<\/p>\n

Fertility Awareness and Men<\/strong><\/p>\n

On top of all the fascinating insights into time-lapse and lab practices, ESHRE 2018 also offered food for thought on fertility awareness, gamete donation, health outcomes for ICSI and IVF children, social egg freezing and many other related topics that I unfortunately have no space to list in a blog post. Taking into consideration the panels I attended and the topics that caught the public\u2019s attention, a couple of prominent themes emerged for me. As infertility is an issue that more and more couples face, the need for fertility awareness education is becoming quite pressing. Presenters and commentators alike noted that this type of education should start early. \u00a0However, quite a few presentations stressed the absence of men from this conversation. I got a sense that health professionals are worried about this and luckily, researchers are starting to have more conversations with men about reproductive timing and infertility. However, the overwhelming sense was that more work needs to be done to get men involved.<\/p>\n

Men\u2019s absence was highlighted in another way: women who undergo social freezing overwhelmingly do so because they haven\u2019t found the right partner. Prof. Marcia Inhorn delved into this subject with data from qualitative interviews conducted in the US and Israel. Interestingly, this is one of the main stories that the media picked up. We are now talking more about men\u2019s lack of a sense of urgency when it comes to having kids. This phenomenon, however, might be problematic in light of increasing knowledge that men also undergo a fertility decline as they age.<\/p>\n

To add to all the interesting discussions, I was very glad to see social science perspectives represented at the conference and think we need to start building more bridges with the medical community. This is something that RHB aims for in our future endeavours. We also very much look forward to our next ESHRE meeting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the beginning of this month, I had the pleasure of attending one of the biggest conferences on reproduction, organized by the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). The ESHRE 2018 annual meeting took place in Barcelona, so, needless to say, I was brimming with excitement not only for the tens of presentations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8],"tags":[14,15,13],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferences","tag-embryology","tag-eshre","tag-reproduction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9YI6o-2x","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":247,"url":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=247","url_meta":{"origin":157,"position":0},"title":"Our Year in Review","date":"1st March 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"2018 has been a busy year for the Remaking the Human Body team. We are happy to share that we have, so far, conducted observations at 5 sites and have interviewed more than 50 professionals and patients about their views on time-lapse, IVF technology, and add-ons in the UK. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Conferences"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":617,"url":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=617","url_meta":{"origin":157,"position":1},"title":"PET’s annual conference: The current state and regulation of the fertility sector","date":"13th December 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"At the beginning of December, we kept up our tradition of attending the Progress Educational Trust\u2019s (PET) annual conference. The title and topic of this year\u2019s online event was \u2018Reproducing Regulation: Who Regulates Fertility and How?\u2019 With 16 talks across the full day, I have chosen just a handful here\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Conferences"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":649,"url":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=649","url_meta":{"origin":157,"position":2},"title":"Final public engagement event report: Panel on IVF add-ons","date":"1st February 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The final part of our public engagement event series took place on 26 January. This event was organised by the Progress Educational Trust (PET) and chaired by Sarah Norcross, who has been involved in several other of our public engagement activities. PET has a substantial track record of engaging in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":678,"url":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=678","url_meta":{"origin":157,"position":3},"title":"Our Poster at ESHRE 2022","date":"6th July 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"This week, I have been attending the ESHRE conference online. Despite my fervent hope, the long-awaited moment to return to in-person conferences has not transpired and I had to revert to virtual participation. Being able to attend remotely was, unexpectedly, a great opportunity. The conference platform was highly effective, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Uncategorised"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":266,"url":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=266","url_meta":{"origin":157,"position":4},"title":"Researching reproductive technologies: Notes on our summer and progress so far","date":"27th September 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"The RHB team had a productive summer with amazing conferences and manuscript writing. Having received so much useful feedback as of late, we are ready to publish some of the first project findings. The conferences we attended in the past months have really helped us contextualize our research and hone\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Conferences"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":369,"url":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=369","url_meta":{"origin":157,"position":5},"title":"PET’s annual conference: COVID-19 and the fertility sector","date":"16th December 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I had the pleasure of attending this year\u2019s online Progress Educational Trust (PET) annual conference where the topics for consideration were fertility, genomics and COVID-19. Consultant Jane Stewart opened the first session by speaking about the experiences of fertility clinics and she used the surfing analogy of \u2018riding the wave\u2019\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Conferences"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remakingthehumanbody.sbm.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}