Online Reviews

I had egg donation with my husband’s sperm. I’m in menopause. I couldn’t do it in Scotland because you can only do it up to 45 years.

The Embio clinic is great. You get attention. Dr Paraschos is splendid, makes you feel at ease. You don’t get scared about anything.  The IVF coordinator, was highly morally supportive, very cordial. Even in the room when you are in bed, the nurses and doctors around make you feel at ease.

I’ll wait until the pregnancy test and then I’ll go home. Some people just go home without waiting. I chose to do that, because in Scotland it would cost me about 330 pounds for the ultrasound scan at a private hospital, extremely expensive. If I go to my general doctor it takes more than a month. Here at Embio it’s quite fast, and not expensive. That was the reason I decided to stay in Athens for the pregnancy test.

We had IVF with donor eggs because we've been trying for a long time and I didn't have any good eggs left because of my age. Also I have blocked tubes, so it wasn't coming naturally.

We have tried twice at an IVF clinic on Crete but unsuccessfully both times.

This clinic (Embio) is very professional, helpful, seems very well organised, generally supportive.

Dr Paraschos is good, he seems to know what he's doing, what he's talking about.

Everything has been very smooth, very straight forward.

I’m 50 and age is not on my side, so my eggs were no good and the suggested treatment was egg donation.

We first had an egg donation treatment two years ago in Spain, in Barcelona, at the Eugin clinic. It was completely unsuccessful, and the embryo transfer was extremely painful. There was never any mention of sedation. And it should have been. Because of the scarring, there was no way to get the catheter through. They knew all my medical history about my cone biopsy, but didn’t take it into account. I had an ectopic pregnancy a few years back, and a couple years ago, I had an abscess in my fallopian tubes. When I was having these problems with the ectopic pregnancy, I also had a cone biopsy. That left scarring, and so from then on it would be difficult to transfer any embryos.

When I saw this website and that Dr Paraschos was trained under Professor Winston in England, I thought I’d be in safe hands.

And so I went through a similar process, I said about the cone biopsy and about the extremely painful transfer that I had at the Spanish ivf clinic, and straight away, the IVF coordinator, put my mind at rest. She told me that Dr Paraschos was very experienced, that he had lots and lots of experience in embryo transfers – straightforward and more complicated ones – and he would know what sort of treatment to do.

Indeed, Dr Paraschos highlighted that there would be scarring from the cone biopsy. That’s what would have made it difficult to have a straightforward transfer. So, if you’re asking me, it was doubtful that they ever managed to transfer the 2 embryos in Barcelona. As Dr Paraschos highlighted, he couldn’t get the embryos through the scarring tissue without doing something about it.

So this morning Dr Paraschos knew that we should probably need sedation. He tried without sedation at first, but he was ready for the sedation when it proved necessary. He had to dilate the cervix os (the opening of the cervix) between 3.5-4.5 millimitres, and it was quite straightforward after that.

My endometrium was slightly less than what it should be. Ideally, it should have been between 8 and 12 millimitres, and mine was 7 milimiters. But he said that he had successful pregnancies on women who had only 5-6 millimitres before now.

So that was that, four embryos were transferred, and the IVF coordinator has just given us the final lot of medication to take away.

We stayed 5 nights in Athens.

We already have four sons from previous marriages, but we’d like to have a go and have one ourselves.

Everyone is great here at EmBIO. Dr Paraschos if very professional, very forward. The IVF coordinator, has been answering my emails straight away. I emailed, and I thought, it’s going to take a couple of days for an answer, and, before I thought about it, she answered to all my questions, day and night. Really put you at ease.

I had egg donation with my partner’s sperm. I’m 50 so egg donation gives a better chance. We’ve been trying for six months. In the end we thought we’d better follow this track because the age limit in Greece is 51. In Holland it’s 46. You can’t get therapy after that. When you’re 46 they don’t really want to do it.

Greece is the only place in Europe where you can do egg donation legally until you are 51. At the Embio clinic people speak brilliant English, both doctors and staff. The clinic is very nice, impressive, well organized. Everything was very neat and tidy.  Our first impression was “wow”.

The only painful thing about the embryo transfer was my bladder, which was full as I needed to go to the toilet. Otherwise, it was very quick.

We did all the tests in Greece at Embio, because to do them in Holland would have been very difficult in the sense that you have to explain why you need an egg donor. The doctors are not very happy about that. So I had to go to Embio three times. First for the blood tests and the scan, the 2^nd time for the 2^nd scan and we bought all the medicine in Athens as well, cause you need a prescription in Netherlands. And the third time for the sperm collection and the embryo transfer.

I did a lot or research and I read great reviews online about Dr Paraschos and EMBIO. In the States the cost is much more prohibitive. And so those two things played a major factor.

I was told that I have elevated fsh and would be difficult for me to use my own eggs. I tried 2 IUIs, both failed. The first one ne was natural, the second one wasn’t and after the reading that I did, I didn’t believe that IVF using my own eggs was the way to go.

Then I started looking at either embryo donation or egg donation in the States and I saw that the cost was not something that I could consider. And then I started researching what the cost would be if I did it overseas.

In Europe it was also the age. I’m 41. That is a big problem in the States. Clinics are afraid that their statistics would go down, so they don’t like to take on candidates with limited chances of producing a live birth.

Probably I could have done everything from home and go to Embio for the transfer, but I chose to be in Athens for the entire time (a little over 3 weeks), and I’m glad I did.

Dr Paraschos is wonderful. He is very supportive, easy to talk to, has a great bedside manner, explains things very well, and most of all, he is understanding. The staff was wonderful. Maria is so supportive, she’s always available, she clarifies everything, she’s a great person to guide you through this process.

Hi Dr Paraschos - C. & A. here from Sweden. We just wanted you to know that I gave birth to our son, J. yeasterday morning. Everything went well and it was a normal delivery. J. was 53,5 cm tall and the weight was 3836 gram....big boy ♥♥♥♥
We'll send you a nice picture later on but I give you one now as well:-)
Thank you so much for making our dream come true ♥♥♥♥

Good Morning,

I hope you are both well and had a great Christmas and New Year.

We are both delighted to send you the attached pictures our beautiful baby girl O. D. - Born on 11/11/15 (38 weeks and 1 day), weighing in at 3 kgs and absolutely perfect! She is doing fantastically well and is now 9 weeks old :-) 

This is just a quick e-mail to say THANKS SO MUCH for everything! From our very first correspondence to when we left Athens, the whole team at Embio have been absolutely great and we cannot thank you enough for providing our miracle baby girl to us! 

A special thank you to S. for always being there for us with any of our numerous questions and being a welcoming friendly face to us when we came to Athens. We have already recommended Embio to a couple of friends who are very interested given our success and miracle baby!

THANKS AGAIN!

Kindest Regards

B&J and baby

I started spotting late October. After one month, I told my gynecologist and he tested me twice with an ultrasound (after he made sure this wasn't a hormone problem).

The ultrasound showed nothing, but the spotting wouldn't stop. Some days there was none at all, other days some yellow brown discharge. He told me that if it didn't stop completely, he'd test me with hysteroscopy. He said I wouldn't be given general anesthesia, just a light sleep.

I said, what the heck? First of all, because spotting was getting on my nerves, and then I needed to know if everything was alright, and yes... work out without seeing those annoying period spots.

Next thing I remember is waking up feeling starving. No pain whatsoever. The "perp" was a small uterine polyp. Right across me there was a lady who had just had an embryo transfer, and said it was the first time she felt no pain either at EMBIO with Dr Paraschos, whereas the other 2 transfers she had had before at another fertility clinic had caused intense pain. As for me, I was just told not to drive home, but since I felt OK, I did anyway.

Next day I was back to work and nobody knew a thing. Dr Paraschos had told me I would have some blood that would last a few days. Actually, I kept bleeding less and less for 9 days. And now all I have to say is thank God I'm completely spotless no matter how hard I work out.

My advice is if you have spotting in between periods, don't be scared. Just talk to your gyno and find out what causes it.

In Canada if you are pregnant over 35 you have to do a lot of tests to convince your doctor to keep the baby. I had to abort my baby at 6 months of pregnancy because she had a heart problem and the doctors insisted that I have an abortion. Because in Canada they make it very difficult for you to operate on a baby.

But a friend of mine kept her twins that the doctors had told her to abort, and now the twins are in the hospital but they are still alive. They call you every day to convince you to have an abortion. The pressure is too much. First they convince you to take the amnio and then they tell  you your baby will have Down Syndrome and things like that.

If I'm pregnant now I will never listen to them and take an amnio test. I have a 40 year old friend. The doctors did everything to convince her to have an abortion. She refused and now she has her baby totally healthy. She told me if she had heard their advice she would have lost her baby.

I will never never ever take the amnio if I get pregnant now. If it is a sick baby, I will keep it.  Any baby will be my baby!

We came to Embio for Tandem IVF. I’m a doctor in Emergency Medicine.

After I consulted Dr Paraschos online he introduced the IVF coordinator and then we kept in touch with both. The IVF coordinator was very helpful. She arranged for the prescriptions and we got all medications in the UK. I started taking them and in the middle of the cycle we came to Athens, and then they started doing the scans. The first scan we did in the UK and continued the scans at Embio for free. Embio does all the scans for free!

Then I had my egg collection including my eggs and the donor’s. Today I had the embryo transfer. It was very nice. I feel very relaxed. Every day we were seeing Doctor Paraschos and IVF coordinator, very nice.

We asked the IVF coordinator to give us some clues for accommodation and she helped us to find an apartment not far from the clinic. We are planning to stay for some days more to have some rest. We’ve been to the Acropolis Museum, very nice place, a lot of things to see.