Over the past few of years, we have seen a dramatic increase in pregnancy rates with IVF at Reproductive Science Center of the San Francisco Bay Area. We recently tabulated our January – June 2013 IVF success rates and they are amazing!

Some highlights:

• 35 and under pregnancy rate per embryo transfer 75%
• Egg Donation pregnancy rate per embryo transfer 76%

35 percent of embryo transfers in all age groups were elective single embryo transfers (ESETs). In women 35 and under pregnancy rates with a single blastocyst embryo transferred were 75 percent.

Transferring a single blastocyst embryo in some groups of patients helps to achieve the healthiest, safest pregnancy, reducing risks associated with twin pregnancies.

Frozen embryo transfer pregnancy rates approach fresh IVF cycle success rates and continue to get better since we are now using a newer technique to freeze embryos, vitrification.

It’s helpful for patients to look closely at an IVF center’s success rates and experience when choosing an infertility center for their treatment. We believe there are many reasons for our increasing success.

We have a very experienced team. Some of our physicians have been working in the infertility field for more than 20 years. Other physicians have been trained more recently bringing the latest knowledge and techniques to the team. Members of our nursing and sonographer team have also been working in the infertility field for 20 years.

Our “Team Approach” provides better customer service/patient satisfaction and allows patients to have the benefit of multiple experienced doctors reviewing their care (not possible in single physician infertility practices). Every day we have a team meeting where multiple physicians, nursing and IVF Laboratory staff review patient treatments and provide input to make the best decision for daily patient care. Every patient still has one primary doctor who plans and coordinates their care.

One physician performing all the procedures on any given day allows that physician to focus on just doing egg retrievals and embryo transfers that day, and we believe this attention to detail also helps our success.

Most importantly our incredible IVF Lab Team is experienced, dedicated and very detail oriented following strict protocols. This attention to detail is critical for best success in an IVF program. They have developed a great “culture system” using state of the art incubators to support embryo growth to get the best embryo quality. Over the past 1 1/2 years we have seen great consistency in the growth of embryos to the blastocyst stage in our laboratory. This very experienced team is led by Kristen Ivani, PhD. who has been our IVF Lab Director for more than 20 years.

We are part of the Integramed Network composed of nationally recognized infertility centers. We share information on best practice techniques for infertility treatment and laboratory improvement.

Our success rate statistics are verified by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the National agencies that report and audit IVF center success rates. Some IVF centers, including some in the San Francisco Bay Area, do not report their statistics to SART.

Be sure to ask any infertility center you consider working with to provide you their recent success rates (not assembled over the past 3 years), and confirm that their success rates are reported to SART and the CDC.

It takes a great team, hard work and attention to detail to attain the best success rates in IVF.

We are proud to be able to offer those excellent success rates to our patients at RSC.