Nothing is more reassuring than to attend a clinic for fertility treatment and to find nice, easy to read marketing material which reports on the clinic’s rate of success. Before you get all warm and fuzzy, please consider the following pitfalls.
Make sure the statistical information relates to you. Statistics often come with fine print. Do you match the inclusion criteria? Do not get sold on a promise that is not applicable to you. Consider such things as if your age and the cause of your infertility are included in the statistic.
Understand that no matter how high the rate of success may be, there are still patients who do not fall pregnant from the treatment. I have witnessed the following logic many times. Initial thought: the success rate of 70%, 80% etc is very high. Second thought: it is so close to 100%!!!! Which then turns into the false assumption: a positive pregnancy is a certainty. Unfortunately, no, this is not the case. I do not mean to be flippant, but 70% or 80% of a baby is still not a full baby. Please be aware, probability is only a good indicator of success over many attempts. But, on single attempts (such is often the case for fertility treatments) there can be no true promises.
TCM is a very unique modality of health care. Statistics on treating a certain diagnosis are misleading. One cause of infertility according to western medicine can be further broken down into a number of energetic imbalances according to the Chinese medicine model. Each of these imbalances will have varying degrees of difficulty to treat. I often get referrals from satisfied patients. More often than not, they refer others who suffer the same cause of infertility as defined by western medicine. They assume that because I helped them, I will equally be able to help their friend. This is not always the case.
