The diagnosis of sterility creates great uncertainty for a couple who, suddenly, see their future plans to start a family falter. All this can cause great emotional instability in the couple who suffers it and, the need to seek help in a fertility center, often contributes to increase the stress.
On the other hand, women without a partner, who do not have a diagnosis of sterility as such, but who will require reproductive treatment to become mothers or preserve their fertility, are also forced into the process of choosing an appropriate center.
But, which criteria should we focus on when choosing an assisted reproduction center?
1. SUCCESS RATES
Fertility Centers usually publish their success rates on their web pages but it is always advisable to refer to official records to be able to evaluate the results. In the case of Spanish clinics, there is a registry of the Spanish Fertility Society, where we can consult the pregnancy and live birth rates of each center. However, these rates should be evaluated with caution, since not all centers treat patients with the same prognosis or have the same complication rates. The best parameter would be to be able to assess the take home baby rate in the shortest possible time and with the fewest associated complications.
2. PATIENT FOCUSED
The center must be focused on the needs of the patient and must assess their satisfaction in each of the processes carried out in the clinic. The treatment must be individualized and patients must have full confidence that their case will be treated in a personalized way, to adapt each step of the treatment to their real possibilities.
3. CERTIFICATION
Internal control of the processes is essential to guarantee their execution. The fact that the center presents an external certification (such as ISO or UNE certifications) is an important reference on the control system and its constant review of the protocols for its improvement, which will provide better results and greater satisfaction for patients.
4. SAFETY
The existence of safety protocols should be an essential condition for an assisted reproduction center. Working with extremely sensitive biological material deserves the strictest measures to guarantee a treatment with maximum safety for the patients and also for the staff of the center. But in addition, the treatment of confidential medical information, the correct recording of all personal data and the maintenance of sample traceability, are key security points that we must ask for as well.
5. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
An assisted reproduction center must be a pioneer in its field and must therefore have a spirit of continuous improvement of its protocols, learning new therapies and acquiring the best technology to make it available to patients.
6. SCIENTIFIC SUPPORT
Assisted reproduction is a constantly evolving field and a center that wants to have the best success rates must be able to analyze its work, publish its results and develop research protocols that allow it to remain active in the development of new techniques to be integrated into your treatments. In this sense, the scientific and research work of the team’s doctors and biologists is essential.
So, choosing an assisted reproduction center is not an easy task and often it fills us with doubts, especially when there exist a large number of centers to choose from.
Perhaps with these 6 objective points you will be able to have a first selection of centers, then go deeper by other more subjective criteria such as references from other patients, proximity to your home or price differences.