A traditional approach to the problem of infertility is to perform a standardized work-up to exclude major causes of infertility and then wait for pregnancy to occur. Such an approach does not take advantage of recent scientific advances in our understanding of reproductive physiology. At Infertility Solutions, P.C., our objective is to perform a targeted rapid evaluation of the couple before moving to providing help to make pregnancy occur as quickly as possible using the technologies that are available.
Testing is done to help determine choices of therapy that are going to be most effective. Any therapy is undertaken for a limited number of tries before re-evaluation. Most studies show that if a particular therapy is going to work, it will work in three to six attempts. The couple then either undergoes further testing or moves to a more advanced therapy. We believe that this targeted therapy is both more cost efficient and time effective than other approaches to infertility care.
There are always underlying reasons that couples have difficulty getting pregnant even when that reason is not obviously apparent. One issue that is often missed in non-specialty and some specialty practices is the problem of decreased ovarian reserve. In this setting, a women appears to be ovulating normally, but has fewer eggs in her ovaries than one would expect based on her age alone. Such women produce an increased number of abnormal eggs, have an increased risk of miscarriage, and will have menopause at an earlier than average age. We often can make this diagnosis during a couple first visit. Some women in their mid-twenties will unexpectedly have this problem. Recognizing it early will enable them to have a chance at pregnancy which could be lost with a few years of delay caused by entry level therapies.
