This week, a reader contacted me regarding fragmentation in her embryos. She was told by her RE that things were looking “good” but then he also mentioned that some of the embryos on day 3 were showing some signs of fragmentation. Her question was how concerning was this observation that her embryos had some fragmentation? [...]

Like a forgetful spouse, I missed my two year  “blogaversary” last week on May 3rd, 2012. In the last two years, I have tried to answer as many questions as I can from patients both through my blog and as many of you know, through my contact email. In the two years, the most popular [...]

A while back, I wrote the article, Participatory medicine – the e-patient revolution which talked about e-patient Dave and the Society for Participatory Medicine.   There appears to be increasing momentum to encourage patients to become more involved in healthcare decisions. The very concept that patients don’t have to be bystanders in their health care is  [...]

You might think that the infertility community has nothing in common with the ProChoice community, but you would be very wrong. Both groups risk access to reproductive health care if the numerous personhood bills pending in various states are actually passed. If you haven’t already run across these personhood bills, they all have in common [...]

In recognition of National Infertility Awareness week which ends Saturday, Resolve asks bloggers to blog on the topic of patient issues and start with the phrase “Don’t ignore….” Here are my thoughts on the topic. Infertility treatments are complicated, expensive and emotionally distracting ….BUT  you will NOT spend your whole life in treatment. There is [...]

The other day I received this question (paraphrased)  from a reader of my blog: “What, if any, training and on-going education is required for embryologists in the US ?  And, what, if any, regulations are placed on a fertility  lab in terms of passing muster or maintaining some standard?” Well, the answer to that simple [...]

The on-line version of Fertility and Sterility published a review of 56 previous studies; “Birth defects in children Conceived by in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection: a meta-analysis”on April 3, 2012, epub ahead of print. This study found an increased relative risk (RR) of congenital birth defects reported in children conceived with either IVF [...]

Maybe it’s just the 24/7 political news cycle in an election year making me cranky, but the current drive to repeal women’s rights on various issues and reproductive rights specifically makes me want more protective regulation for infertility patients, not less. The US Healthcare system is one of the most contentious areas of debate in [...]

Today I had this  question from a patient,  “How much info should you expect to get in terms of follow-up from your RE and lab after a failed cycle?”  She was expressing her frustration that all the follow-up she had was that they would try ICSI next time because she had zero percent fertilization in [...]

According to the Bionews report Frozen embryo ‘adoption’ scheme to lose US government funding,   the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will not request funding  for continued support of the Embryo Adoption Awareness Campaign and the program will be discontinued in 2013.  This Campaign was created in 2007 by Nightlight Christian Adoptions, a Pro-life [...]