In November, we finalized our annual SART data. SART is an acronym that stands for, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. SART is an important organization that helps accumulate data from IVF and infertility clinics all across the country, and it provides a way for patients—or potential patients—to look at pregnancy outcomes per clinic.
It has important information on there about outcomes, and the number of cycles, of number of egg retrievals, number of transfers, and pregnancy outcomes for patients stratified by age.
Now, the outcome information is important, but I do recommend that all potential patients and current patients talk to their providers about the SART outcomes to help interpret the data.
Although it may seem rather straightforward to interpret it, there are subtle nuances within it as to the way that it's reported. For instance, if somebody happens to do one IVF cycle and has one normal embryo but they choose to do a second cycle to accumulate more embryos for the future, we call that family-building, or embryo banking. It could look as if somebody needed to do two cycles in order to achieve a pregnancy, when in reality they may not have needed to do two cycles, however, they chose to.
Other outcomes to look at are:
Having a conversation with your doctor about your clinic, about volume, the number of cycles they do, as well as their outcomes, is important, because there are advantages of going to a clinic that does many cycles, whereas there are definitely advantages of going to a clinic that does fewer cycles.
Deciding what is the best option and potential outcomes for each individual patient is important, however, discussing with your doctor if you have any questions is even more important.
Hopefully this was helpful information. At OC Fertility, we are proud to be a SART affiliated partner, and we look forward to seeing our data finalized in the upcoming months.
