Success rates with IVF are very age sensitive and they also depend on your personal Reproductive Health. Our goal is to HELP YOU HAVE A BABY THIS YEAR.

A modern IVF facility including laboratory & staff are needed to provide the best results. Dr. Rakoff moved his fertility practice to San Diego Fertility Center in 2009 to provide a state of the art IVF laboratory for his patients.

THINK POSITIVE!  BE SUCCESS ORIENTED

 Studies suggest that people who do mindful meditation,  use acupuncture, or have psychological counseling have better pregnancy rates.

Positive thinking does help.  If you are depressed, seek help.  Counseling, psychotherapy and medications are available.

Remember- donor eggs, testicular biopsy, donor sperm or gestational surrogates “may” be a better alternative than adoption or childlessness.   Keep this in mind if: 

          You are not an ideal candidate;  with such situations as

1. Women over 38 years of age or males over 55
2. A male who requires a testicular biopsy to retrieve sperm
3. You have had intrauterine fibroids
4. You have autoimmune diseases (such as Lupus).
5. You are diabetic
6. Have a day 3 FSH hormone level of more than 10
7. Produce less than 4 or 5 mature eggs per cycle
8. You have bleeding or coagulation disorders
9. You have a history of cancer and chemotherapy or radiation.
10. You have an AMH  level less than 0.8

We know that “some” people with these aforementioned problems may achieve pregnancy with IVF and we (as opposed to some centers) will accept you for IVF treatment…but note, such couples have a lower success (live birth) rate than our standard cases.

In recent review of 158 sequential IVF cases, we found that due to the referral nature of my practice, only 44 of the 158 cases would be considered “standard” and they have a substantially better live birth rate.

  PREGANANCY SSUCCESS RATE STATISTICS

Sorting through statistics for fertility treatment can be a confusing and disheartening process.  This may be especially true when comparing statistics between practices.    Some fertility clinics only accept patients they believe are the most likely to conceive through their treatment program.  Such a practice ensures that the clinic receives high marks for success rates.

We are very proud to offer a different approach.  As a referral center we accept a broad range of patients, whether or not they fall into the “most likely to conceive” category. With this approach, our numbers for success are sometimes lower than some other fertility doctors.

We are also proud of our success rates for our most fertile patients, in our IVF or our Donor Egg IVF Program.  We recognize that those with more complex health issues often will have lower success rates, however, we feel it is important to care for all of our patients and offer everyone a chance to conceive.

Finally, SART,FDA, CDC and Congress all suggest that we not compare statistics from one center to another for the above reasons. For example, some centers with very high published rates may have a high percentage of patients with minimal fertility factors. One such example is fertile couples who wish sex selection to “balance” their family with a child of a particular sex.  These fertile couples are reported along with the truly infertile couples. This sometimes gives the appearance that such a  center has a higher IVF success rate.

Dr. Rakoff is always striving to improve success rates. To this end , he transferred the care of all of his patients from his aging original IVF Lab at Scripps Clinic- Green Hospital to the state of the art IVF Lab at the San Diego Fertility Center. This top notch staff and team of Embryologists have consistently excellent pregnancy results with a wide variety of patients. Their data can be seen at the SART web site . Dr. Rakoff’s patients already appear to be reaping the benefits of this superb program.