Let’s first take a look at why there are so many harmful and ineffective treatments still around. Patients would expect that all good doctors would offer only safe and effective treatment – so why should useless and ineffective treatments still exist ?

The reason for this is that infertility is a complex area, and there is still a lot of confusion about the best treatment option for many common problems even amongst doctors . When doctors disagree amongst themselves, how is a patient to make sense of all the options ?

Most doctors take pride in their own personal experience , and trust their own clinical judgment. Even though there is no proof that the treatments are actually helpful, they remember patients who conceived after taking that treatment.

Few doctors are broad minded enough to study the scientific literature critically, and few have the objectivity to practice evidence-based medicine.

Let’s look at the example of a patient who is doing her third IVF cycle. She starts doing acupuncture, and conceives in her third IVF cycle. In her mind, the fact that she failed her first two IVF cycles, and conceived only after doing acupuncture means that it was the acupuncture which was responsible for her IVF success. In reality, it’s well known that IVF treatments have a cumulative conception rate of about 30% per cycle for the first 4 cycles, which means she may very well have conceived in her third cycle even if she hadn’t done the acupuncture. 

Here’s a list of what we feel are dangerous treatments of which patients should beware !

1. Varicocele surgery.

2. Medical therapy for low sperm counts.

3. Surgery for fibroids. Fibroids are very common benign tumours found in the uterus of many young women. 

4. Surgery for removing an ovarian cyst. Ovarian cysts are very common in young women, which is why they are very common in infertile women.  They just be aspirated if required. 

5. Medical therapy for endometriosis.

6. Too many stimulated IUI's

7. treating hypogonadotropic male with hormones.

Not only do all these treatments waste time, money and energy, they also cause patients to get fed up and frustrated, so that they end up losing confidence in doctors - and in themselves !