When I provide patients who have failed an IVF cycle with a second opinion , I asked them to share their medical records with me .
I am very disappointed when they don't have photos of their embryos, and when I ask them why not , they get defensive, and provide a number of justifications.
- The doctor never give us any
- I didn't even know that you could ask for embryo photos
- That’s not the practice in that particular clinic . They are the best, and they don’t give photos to any of their patients
None
of these are good answers .
IVF patients
need to do their homework prior to starting an IVF cycle , because you can't afford
to leave everything up to the doctor . If you are lucky enough to find a good
doctor who follows good global practices and provides photos routinely and
proactively to all his patients, you will be fine. But what happens if you end
up in a bad IVF Clinic ? The tragedy is the number of bad clinics far outweighs
the number of good ones !
The reason
these IVF doctors refuse to provide photos is because they know they are not
capable of producing good quality embryos , and they want to hide this fact from
their patients. The loser in this situation is the patient , and this can be an
expensive error to make !
When
I suggest to patients that they should have been more proactive , they get
upset ! Isn’t that the doctor’s job ? Why should a patient have to worry about
all these technical details ? We are qualified to understand all this ! Isn’t that
what we are paying the doctor for ?
Just
saying that it's a Grade A embryo means nothing – after all, talk is cheap !
This is why it's so important that embryo photographs be provided , and in a
good clinic , doctors take pride in producing good embryos, and providing
photographs as well, because they want to share this documentation with their patients
– it provides them with confidence that they've received high quality medical
care .
The fact
that the patient did not get photos is a Red Flag , and suggests that the care
provided wasn't good . Some patients say – But the doctor showed us the embryo
on the screen – and we saw it was good. This is a Red Flag too ! If he could
show you the embryo on the screen , then why couldn't he take a photograph of
the embryo and give that to you ? After all, patients can’t understand how to
assess the quality of an embryo by seeing it for a few seconds on a computer
monitor !
And
while it's true that I don't know how good or bad every IVF clinic is , a
useful rule of thumb is to assume that if the IVF clinic doesn't provide
photographs , it is not a good Clinic