Benenden Fertility Centre
Before choosing Benenden outright, our patients decide to have their IVF both abroad with InterTrust Fertility & in the UK with a clinic like Benenden. This combination of having their main treatment at our clinics supported with ultra-sound scans at a local clinic, makes the whole process much more convenient & affordable.
This is a sparklingly new clinic that only opened in February 2010. Benenden Fertility Centre is an independent specialist unit based within Kent’s Benenden Hospital IVF wing. While the lab features cutting-edge technology and the rooms of the centre look great, you won’t have access to a large amount of success rate data. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – read our Selecting a Clinic article to understand why success rates aren’t always as clear as they seem anyway.
Here, your age will only be a number, as they treat private patients of all ages and offer unlimited IVF cycles. There’s also no BMI (body mass index) limit, so if you’ve overindulged recently, they won’t ask you to lose a few pounds before starting treatment… although it’s advisable to be a healthy weight to optimise your chances: get snacking on those apples!
While the Benenden Fertility Centre hosts open days and evenings for patients, it, unusually, doesn’t include counselling in its offer, so you’ll have to find one yourself. The centre provides diagnostic tests, IVF, ICSI, egg and sperm preparation and collection, insemination, in vitro maturation (an increasingly effective alternative to IVF, especially for women with polycystic ovaries), as well as the storage of testicular and ovarian tissue, eggs, sperm and embryos for use at a later date. They can also transfer frozen embryos, carry out surgical sperm retrieval and culture embryos to the blastocyst stage before transferring to the womb during an IVF or ICSI cycle.
If you’ve already been through unsuccessful treatment and have realised that you need to recruit and use a donor, Benenden Fertility Centre isn’t for you, as they don’t yet have the facilities to store and use donated eggs and sperm. Nor do they offer genetic screening, surgical sperm or ovarian tissue collection. So if you’re a single woman or in a same-sex relationship then you’ll have to broaden your search – something you might be familiar with in your search for a partner!
Heading up Benenden Fertility Centre is Mohammed Hefni, a senior gynaecologist at Beneden Hospital. He will met you for your initial consultation to provide you with his expert advice, garnered through a lifetime of treating infertility. If you’re unlucky enough to suffer from endometriosis, you’ll be in the right place, as this is one of his research specialisms. Experienced embryologists and staff will guide you through the process and aim to make you feel comfortable – as comfortable as is possible, anyway, when you’re getting injections in your rear end and probes stuck inside you! They pride themselves on there being no waiting list for your initial consultation, so you can get going right away.
Cost is a big issue for anyone embarking on fertility treatment, but Benenden Fertility Centre are pretty competitive on price. A standard IVF cycle costs £2500, although special offers are a regular feature on their website. And while you don’t have to join just to have fertility treatment here, members of the Benenden Healthcare Society get a 25% discount on their first cycle of IVF or IVF with ICSI. As in the majority of clinics, you will have to pay extra for your fertility drugs as well as blastocyst transfer, freezing of embryos and other non-standard techniques. Compare Benenden to our success rates.
Getting to Benenden
Benenden Fertility Centre is accessible by train, with a free minibus from the station, and can be reached easily from London and the rest of Kent. For more details see: www.benenden.org.uk
Facilities and staff – Benenden Fertility Centre (BFC)
Facilities
- Wheelchair access
- Consulting room
- Counselling room
- Laboratory
- Male production room
- Parking
- Procedure room
- Near public transport
- Recovery room
- Scan room
- Waiting room
Staff available for patients
- Named nurse system
- One physician throughout treatment
Staff
- Licence Holder (Treatment): Mrs Jane Abbott
- Person Responsible (Treatment): Mr Mohamed Hefni
Topic: Benenden IVF
