ASRM Update #4: Natural Cycle IVF

I really hate roller coasters. But I hate the spinning tea cup ride even more. All of this dates back to my childhood when I tossed my cookies after playing on the spinning spaceship ride at the playground near my home in Milton, MA. The other children were quite amused by my barfing but what can you expect from 10 year olds.
Here is a classic photo of yours truly at age 10 with my Crazy Car in my driveway in Milton. Note the outstanding fashion sense evident in the checkered polyester pants. This was before I discovered LL Bean. I loved that Crazy Car but did not spin excessively....

Well, on Tuesday morning at the ASRM I awoke at 430 am with the room spinning like crazy. No I was not hung over. And no my friends from VLFC (Very Large Fertility Center) had not slipped me a "micky" the night before at the dinner presentation on IVF. What I had was Benign Positional Vertigo (BPV) which occurs when one of the little grains of sand in your inner ear gets stuck telling your brain that you are orientated in a certain way to vertical while your other ear sends a contradictory signal. The result is a Tea Cup Ride from Hell. I have had this before back when I was living and working on Long Island, so I jumped out of bed and tried to knock the grain of sand loose. The treatment of BPV is completely counter-intuitive....you have to keep tilting your head to elicit the gut-wrenching spinning sensation. With enough repetitions your brain decides to ignore the signal and the spinning stops....usually after you have tossed all your cookies....Well, dear readers, I actually didn't vomit but was able to extinguish the spins in time to get to the Convention Center for our presentations on Natural Cycle IVF.

During the ASRM meeting this year we presented 4 studies on Natural Cycle IVF. The first of these was our 3 year experience with NC-IVF detailing our success rates and number of procedures. The second study was an analysis of the embryology part of NC-IVF including the embryo quality and implantation rate. Finally, yours truly had 2 presentations on the attitudes of physicians about NC-IVF as well as an analysis of the use of NC-IVF nationally based upon the SART reports from 2006 and 2007 (the year we launched our NC-IVF program).

There was a lot of interest in Natural Cycle IVF from fellow physicians, laboratory personnel and from the media. Almost universally the first question asked was "What about your SART statistics?" Readers of this blog may recall my previous posts on this topic (The Politics of Natural Cycle IVF) and although SART Registry Committee is considering our position concerning reporting of NC-IVF separately from stimulated cycle IVF, I am not sure that anything will change in the near future.

We remain committed to Natural Cycle IVF as a viable fertility treatment. Over the next few weeks I will present some rebuttals to the published objections to Natural Cycle IVF. As we remain the largest provider of Natural Cycle IVF in the United States I think that we have a unique perspective on this option and how it fits into other fertility treatment options.