Going through the motions of finding a suitable IVF clinic to handle your fertility treatment can be a daunting and nerve-wracking experience. Add on top of this the general feeling of uncertainty that usually comes with the knowledge that you have a reproductive health issue and it becomes easier to understand these emotions. But if you hope to conceive by undergoing IVF then you really need to talk to several providers and do the appropriate amount of research before making your choice on a particular clinic. It is recommended that you set a consultation session (usually offered free of charge to prospective clients) with several different IVF providers in order to gain a better understanding of that particular clinic and how they operate.
However, when it comes to the consultation meeting itself many people find themselves at a loss for questions and things to ask. Not everybody is knowledgeable about medicine and fertility treatment can be a technically complex affair with a lot of different stages and complicated terms. Ultimately, your main concern is not with the science itself, but of the quality of treatment offered by the provider you are considering. Your chances of success should come before any other factor and it is important to keep this end goal in mind. So let’s look at a few basic questions you can use to help gain a better understanding of the clinic you are consulting with.
1. “Is there anything that you would like to know about me?”
Doctors are by definition, extremely well educated and intelligent individuals, however even they need to have some additional background information about you and your medical history in order to properly evaluate your condition and suggest treatment options. It has to be remembered that your chosen medical professional will most likely have a well-structured conversation ready. This will hopefully help them ascertain all the relevant information he needs to make an accurate and realistic diagnosis. Most doctors will appreciate that you have thought ahead enough to ask them this question however and this should make the upcoming conversation you are about to have a little easier.
2. “In your opinion, what are my chances of success?”
Something that you need to understand about medicine and a medical professionals prognosis is that it is strictly their own interpretation of the data they have available and their opinion on that data. Naturally, everybody has their own way of analyzing data and the conclusions that two different doctors can come to are very often completely different from each other. One doctor may think (based on their experience) that you have a very slim chance of conceiving a child naturally, whereas another more experience or optimistic doctor may think that you have a better chance. This is why it’s good practice to consult multiple clinics for a multitude of opinions to draw an average from.
What you are looking for is a frank and honest opinion about your chances of conceiving. It’s all well and good to have a healthy optimism about your chances of success but this shouldn’t cloud your doctor’s opinions about the issue. They also shouldn’t be exaggerating your chances of success in order to gain you as a client and any sign of this should be treated as a sign of suspicion. You should look for the doctor in question to be able to rationalize their thoughts and opinions and back them up with relevant evidence based on the data about you they have available.
3. “What are your clinic’s success rates for conditions similar to mine?”
Successful fertility clinics will not just be able to tell you exactly why they are a top choice of provider, they should also have equally impressive stats to back these claims up with. Most of the time they will keep a record of exactly how many patients were successful in conceiving a baby with the help of their treatments, what treatments they were receiving and what stage of their treatments they were at. These will usually be grouped by treatment type and when discussing your treatment options, they should mention just how successful their patients have been with this option.
Good clinics should be very proud of their statistics and should rely on them heavily to help demonstrate their value to potential clients. If they attempt to gloss over these important figures or in any way hide them, this should be viewed with an air of suspicion.
4. “How long do you think it will take for me to conceive with this treatment?”
This can be a fairly difficult question to answer. Whilst assumptions can be drawn from statistics and a general idea of your treatment timeline can be guessed, correlation does not always equal causation. Every person is different and their body will react differently to treatments than another person. One person may find great success with IVF treatment for example, whereas another may not be quite so lucky. This is taking into account that your clinic will usually have several methods to help treat your issue and should recommend a course of the treatment that will have the highest likelihood of success.
It also has to be remembered that at this stage the medical professional you are talking to will only have the information that you have given them to go on when making recommendations at this stage. Any opinions they give are a working diagnosis and can change with further testing, for better or for worse and this has to be acknowledged to keep your expectations as realistic as possible.
We here at First Fertility are a leading provider of IVF in Bangkok will consult with you thoroughly in order to gain as detailed a picture of your individual fertility issues as possible. For more information on how we can help you explore your options regarding in-vitro fertilization please review our section on IVF treatments.