California’s Superior Court received a request last week from Dr. Michael Kamrava, the infertility doctor best known for his treatment of “Octomom” Nadya Suleman, asking to reconsider the decision to revoke his license.

We covered this story as it happened back in June, and still stand by our view that the court’s decision was the right one.  Kamrava’s blatant disregard for the safety of his patients (the Octomom was not an isolated case) should not be rewarded by letting him practice in the field of fertility care again.  Not only did his decision to implant Ms. Suleman with 12 embryos put her in danger, but the 8 children to whom she would eventually give birth, who all suffered from extremely low birth weights.  Not to mention, Dr. Kamrava told reporters he implanted Suleman with 6 embryos, the total number of 12 being revealed through medical records during his hearing.

At New Hope Fertility Center, our fertility treatment protocols were created to make sure we treat patients on an individual basis and ensure the most safe and holistic approach to one’s fertility care.  We are excited to see other clinic’s and leading authorities in the assisted reproduction sector adopting some of our unique techniques, including our trademarked Mini-IVF™ treatment.  The ASRM and SART have also recently emphasized the importance of single embryo transfers, one of the leading practices for which we advocate.

The rise of IVF treatment is well-documented, so it is important we maintain integrity and create the safest protocols for our patients and their future children within the fertility sector.

What do you think about the Octomom doctor asking for his license back?

A recent post on FertilityAuthority.com focuses on the benefits of single embryo transfers versus multiple embryo transfers.

At New Hope Fertility Center, we have long been advocates of single embryo transfers and more minimally evasive, safe, and natural fertility care plans, and support any fertility news highlighting the trend towards this particular type of fertility treatment.

As author Dr. Natalie A. Cekleniak notably points out, fertility care protocols should develop along with the advancements made in assisted reproductive technology (ART) to ensure new methods are continually focused on the health of each patient.  The case of Nadya Suleman (the Octomom), is a glaring example of the risk of multiple embryo transfers and multiple births; not only were the eight children delivered nine weeks prematurely, but they were also placed in neonatal intensive care and unquestionably put strain on Suleman’s body as she carried.

Dr. Cekleniak, who is Practice Director for the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science, makes an important call by emphasizing single embryo transfers via the Fertility Authority.  By providing more information on the safety and availability of such treatment, both fertility care doctors and patients can better understand the options available to them before jumping into IVF treatments that may result in overmedication and high risk pregnancies.  Not only are single embryo protocols better for the patient physiologically, but economically as well; insurance companies have recently shown they are more prone to award coverage for IVF plans that follow a single embryo protocol.

We’ll continue to highlight news in the area of single embryo transfers as they arise.  In the meantime, you can read some of our single embryo transfer success stories here.

As news in the fertility treatment world reveal stories of doctors losing licenses and other couples continuing to have multiple births, discussions are arising among governments concerning the regulatory environment of fertility care.

Up until now, the fertility sector in the US has developed mostly under self-regulated standards; however, cases like that of the Octomom doctor, who recently had his license revoked, shine a light on the increased awareness of governments concerning the fragility of fertility treatment and patient protection.

The UK has dealt with fertility care quite differently than the US, with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) currently overseeing fertility clinics across the country.  With the understanding of the risk multiple births carry, the authority has enforced a single embryo transfer policy since 2007.  In other words, if the Octomom doctor was practicing in the UK, he would not have transferred 12 embryos in the first place.  The policy has proven effective in decreasing the occurrence of multiple births, with the IVF multiple birth rate falling from 23.6 percent to 22 percent between 2008 and 2009.  The agency isn’t stopping there: a new HFEA goal aims to drop the multiple birth rate to 15 percent by spring of 2012 (source: BioNews).

The regulatory environments of the US and UK highlight some interesting differences.  With the rising popularity of fertility care (from IVF to surrogacy), the shift towards minimally evasive fertility protocols (including Mini-IVF™ techniques), and a trend among experts towards customizing care, it remains to be seen if this type of intervention will become commonplace in the United States.

Last month we mentioned the possibility of Nadya Suleman’s fertility doctor getting his license revoked due to negligence.  As of Wednesday, the Medical Board of California has gone through with the revocation (source: NYTimes).

Better known as the “octomom,” Suleman became pregnant with eight children through the fertility treatment of Dr. Michael Kamrava, who admits to implanting the then 33-year-old with 12 embryos.  As reported previously, Suleman’s case is not an isolated incident – two other patients have suffered complications from Kamrava’s IVF treatments.

Already the mother of six children as a result of IVF treatments through Kamrava, Suleman’s case is a prime example of the importance of standards in dealing with women’s reproductive health.  Conventional IVF treatments, coupled with high doses of medication and multiple embryo transfers, has consistently proven to be a high risk treatment that leads to multiple child pregnancies that carry risk for both mother and child.  Suleman is only the second mother in the US to give birth to octoplets alive, with many other instances leading to low birth rates and other complications.

At NHFC, we take pride in treating each patients individual needs with an emphasis on taking the most natural and minimally evasive routes in the quest to get our potential mother’s pregnant.  For more information on our natural and Mini-IVF protocols, click here.

New Hope Fertility has been a long time proponent of Single Embryo Transfers as it is a much safer procedure free from the risks that often come hand-in-hand with multiple births. In addition, we pioneered the use of vitrification in the US, allowing for dependable frozen embryo transfers that allowed us to have high success rates with high quality embryos (trying one at a time), rather than depending on transferring many embryos that may be of poorer quality in order to get the same success rates for pregnancy.

This issue, and our long-standing championship of it, is particularly apropos of a recent push to revoke the license of Dr. Michael Kamrava, the Beverly Hills Fertility doctor who is famous for getting Nadya Suleman (more commonly referred to as the “octomom”) pregnant. Although the doctor has publicly declared his regret for the mistake, and has been under a lot of public scrutiny about the procedure, at a hearing in late April, the attorney general in California has been lobbying the Medical Board in California to revoke Kamrava’s medical license — a consequence that is very much a possibility, depending on the ruling of the case and how negligent the treatment of Suleman is deemed to be.

The case for revoking Kamrava’s license, or at least suspending it for a number of years, is made stronger by the fact that his involvement with the “octomom” is not an isolated incident. In fact, two other women in his clinic have had to suffer horrible consequences from his seeming disregard for patient health: in once case, a 48-year-old suffered severe complications after becoming pregnant with quadruplets, and in another case, a 42-year-old woman was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer after receiving fertility treatments (a consequence of hyperstimulation often associated with traditional IVF).

We will be looking out for the results from this case and continue to try to spread the word about our philosophy of single embryo transfers and minimal and natural IVF protocols — our way of helping women achieve their dreams in a safe, responsible way.