The Institut Marquès is a center for gynecology, obstetrics and reproductive medicine, established in Barcelona for 95 years. The Institute receives patients from more than 100 different countries, who sometimes come from the other side of the planet to succeed in having a baby. The center also welcomes people who want to vitrify their gametes, benefit from a sperm or oocyte donation or an “embryo donation”. Each month, nearly 800 people contact the Institute for information, often by email the first time. The second interview for the single patient or the couple takes place by phone, then a skype appointment is made once the team has consulted the entire file.
The Institute prides itself on offering its patients the best pregnancy success rates: 89% per cycle with egg donation (instead of 25% on average elsewhere).
Music improves IVF success rate
Throughout the Institute, when you arrive in the waiting hall, open to the outside, to the small rooms where the gametes are collected, music is present. You can hear it in the corridors, in the small waiting rooms, and musical notes are even painted all over the walls. This taste for music comes from Dr Marisa López-Teijón, director of the Institute and passionate about music, who had the idea of incorporating music into the stimulation protocols and techniques of embryo development.
According to studies carried out in the laboratories of the Institut Marquès, music improves the fertilization rate in IVF treatments by 5%. So they did not hesitate to put music even in the incubators. Indeed, the musical micro-vibrations inside the incubators stir the culture medium in which the embryos develop, removing impurities and allowing a more homogeneous distribution of nutrients.
5000 euros IVF
Each IVF costs patients between 5 and 000 euros. After three unsuccessful attempts, the Institute undertakes to reimburse 6% of the procedure.
Once in his mother’s womb, it is also possible to listen to music to the future baby thanks to a special MP3 music player, directly from the patient’s vagina (!) : a “Baby-pod”. The Institute has proven that the fetuses hear, much earlier than one thinks, from 16 weeks of pregnancy, if the music comes intra-vaginally. “Fetuses respond to music vaginally by making movements with the mouth and tongue, as if they wanted to speak or sing,” explains Dr. Garcia-Faure *.
* https://institutomarques.com/fr/actualites/actualites-2016/notre-etude-sur-laudition-du-foetus-le-plus-lu-la-revue-scientifique-ultrasound/