Dreams of having a baby have come true for thousands of families thanks to the Assisted Conception Unit in NHS Tayside.
The Assisted Conception Unit (ACU) based at ward 35 in Ninewells Hospital is celebrating its 10 year anniversary since the newly-refurbished centre opened its doors in 2011.
Since then, more than 2,200 babies have been born with help from the clinical teams at the ACU.
One of them is Harrison Brownlee, who was born in 2018 after his parents Laura and Michael were supported at the ACU. Harrison will celebrate his third birthday this month and has recently become a proud big brother to baby Avery.
Laura said they will be “forever grateful” to the ACU team for helping them start their family.
Laura said, “We had a truly wonderful experience with the ACU in Dundee. I had a fairly complicated condition that was causing various problems, including fertility difficulties.
“Every single person in the ACU made us feel like we were a priority and treated us with so much kindness. We could not single out any individual to thank because they were all fantastic.
“We will be forever grateful to this team of miracle workers for helping us start our family. We are so lucky that we had this, in our opinion, world class facility right on our doorstep.”
The current ACU was opened in 2011 following an extensive refurbishment of the clinic area to provide a theatre, procedure room, enhanced patient waiting areas, consulting and scanning rooms and three laboratories, including the main embryology laboratory.
The ACU now has a team of multidisciplinary staff including clinical, laboratory, nursing, administrative and counselling staff and also manages the andrology service for Tayside.
Lead Clinical Embryologist, Ellen Drew said, “I feel very privileged to work in the ACU. We have an excellent facility with great equipment but the most important thing in the ACU is our multidisciplinary team.
“Assisted reproduction cycles in the UK have always been a team effort and we have doctors, nurses, an admin team, a lab team and a counsellor all working together in Tayside to help families. I genuinely think our team is fantastic, dedicated, hardworking and enthusiastic.
“I think we have the best job in the world. We help to make babies, and I am so glad to be part of it. I wouldn’t want to do anything else!”
Consultant Dr Sarah Martins da Silva said, “This is a wonderful landmark to celebrate although of course IVF treatment has been carried out at Ninewells hospital for much longer than just the last 10 years. The refurbished ward and clinic facilities are clean and modern, and the laboratory remains state-of-the-art.
“Infertility treatment can be a difficult and challenging journey. We are proud to have touched the lives and made a difference for so many people and families in Tayside and beyond.”
Although the current ACU was opened a decade ago, assisted conception services have been provided in Tayside since the early 1980s. The original IVF Unit was set up in Ninewells Hospital using just three rooms and shared ward space and theatre time. The introduction of this IVF Unit led to the first IVF baby born in Scotland in 1984. Ninewells was also the first unit in Scotland to offer NHS-funded IVF treatment.
The IVF lab was moved to the Assisted Conception Unit in Ward 35 in 1994, with its own procedure room and recovery suite, as well as dedicated nursing staff. This area then underwent an extensive refurbishment in 2011 leading to the state-of-the-art facility in place today.
Senior charge nurse Maureen Wood said, “The ACU within Ninewells Hospital is an amazing place to work. All the disciplines within the unit work well together. IVF treatment is a difficult emotional process for couples, and it is a privilege to help guide them through their journey.”
Consultant Gynaecologist Mythili Ramalingam, who works closely with the ACU, said, “The ACU is a fantastic place to work. One of the most incredible parts of my job is not only that I support patients through the fertility journey, but I also get to help deliver these babies.”
In the last ten years, the ACU has seen some exciting developments including the use of time-lapse incubators, which allows embryos to develop in a very quiet and undisturbed environment while photos are taken of them on a regular cycle for monitoring purposes. The ACU has also introduced a different method of freezing the embryos called vitrification.