Page 11 - Focus on REPRODUCTION SEP 2015

ANNUAL MEETING 2015
Annual Assembly of Members
Membership at a record high, finances in good order
ESHRE’s Annual Assembly of Members took place at the FIL, International Lisbon Fair, Portugal, on 16 June 2015 at 18.00. The minutes of the meeting are recorded below. Matters arising and their approval will take place at next year’s Annual Assembly in Helsinki.
1. Minutes of the last meeting held in Munich
- The minutes of the 2014 Annual Assembly of Members (AAM), having been circulated to all members in Focus on Reproduction (September 2014), were approved.
2. There were no matters arising.
3. Membership of the Society
- Membership of the Society now stands at 6685, an increase on last year’s figure of 6495 (December) and an all-time record membership; 68% of members coming from Europe. The top European membership countries are UK (483 members), Italy (365), Germany (316), Spain (299), Netherlands (291), and Belgium (276). The USA is represented by 314 members, India 267 and China 106.
- The Chairman reported that 77.4% of members hold ‘ordinary membership’, and 13% paramedical membership.
- Disciplines with greatest representation (according to SIG membership) are embryology (30%) and reproductive endocrinology (26%), but there is strong presence in andrology, early pregnancy, safety & quality, and reproductive surgery.
4. Society activities
Annual meetings
- Last year’s Annual Meeting in Munich attracted 8866 participants, somewhat fewer than in London the year previously. Feedback, said the Chairman, was generally positive about both the organisation and scientific programme.
- Attendance in Lisbon was already at a record high, with a total of 10,088 registered (including 1840 exhibitors and 35 press).
- From a record total of 1800 abstracts submitted, 225 had been selected for oral presentation and 800 for poster. The greatest number were from embryology (360) and reproductive endocrinology (317). The majority (56%) were from Europe, with high representations from Asia (29%) and Americas (11%). - Next year’s event will be at the Messukeskus Expo and Convention Centre, Helsinki, from 3-6 July, with 13 precongress courses organised by the Special Interest Groups, and the invited programme already available online.
- The 2017 Annual Meeting will be held in Geneva from 2-5 July, and 2018 in Barcelona from 1-4 July.
Training
- The Chairman reported that 11 Campus courses had been held in 2014 and six in 2015. Three further events were scheduled for 2015, and five formally planned for 2016.
- The Chairman encouraged all members to check the Campus programme on the recently updated ESHRE website for previews of all Campus events.
Data collection
- The Chairman praised the work of the European IVF Monitoring Consortium (EIM) and PGD Consortium. The EIM group, under the chairmanship of Markus Kupka, is now monitoring around 600,000 European ART cycles each year and representing a cumulative total of more than 1 million babies born since the EIM began its work in 1997.
- Data collected for 2011 has now been published in Human Reproduction; preliminary data for 2012 were presented in Lisbon, and data for 2013, which will be the first to use a new online data collection system, has a deadline of 31 October 2015. Online data collection ‘will probably speed up the process by six months,’ said the Chairman.
- Data reported for 2011 (from 1034 reporting clinics) indicate that the number of frozen cycles is slowly reaching that of fresh cycles (120,032 FER vs 137.621 fresh), with pregnancy rates from FER rising from 14.1% in 1997 to 21.4% in 2011. The majority of transfers are with two embryos, while SET continues to rise (to now almost 30% of all cycles). Multiple delivery rates continue to decline, while pregnancy rates increase (now at 32.1%, from 26% in 1997).
- Data XIII (for 2010) from the PGD Consortium has now been published in Human Reproduction, and data collections XV and XVI (for 2011 and 2012) are ready in preliminary form. Data XVI (2013) will be the first to use an online collection system introduced in Lisbon and planned to go live in autumn 2015.
ESTEEM trial
- The ESHRE Study into The Evaluation of oocyte Euploidy by Microarray analysis (ESTEEM) continues as a multicentre RCT with two primary aims: to estimate the likelihood of having no euploid embryos in future ART cycles and to improve live birth rates in women of advanced maternal age.
- There are eight centres in the study, and presently some 244 patients have been randomised (171 patients randomised at June 2014). The target, said the Chairman, is 560 cycles. Professor Karen Sermon (UZ Brussels) has been appointed as a new chairman of the steering group, and the estimated completion date has now been extended to the end of 2016.
Other studies
- The TROPHY study, part funded by ESHRE, is a multicentre
SEPTEMBER 2015 // Focus on Reproduction 11