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Starting a family for any couple is a dream come true. Though changing lifestyles, late marriages, stressful work environment and other factors have led to an increase in infertility rates, the good news is fertility treatments have seen success like never before. This has also led to an exponential increase in the number of fertility doctors that have opened shop in Dubai. So, in this day and age, where a plethora of fertility clinics are vying for your attention, how would you choose the best one?

Here are some points to keep in mind when you choose a fertility doctor/clinic:

1. Experience in different aspects of the treatment:

Fertility doctors, clinics and laboratories require enormous range of experience. For instance, a clinic that does egg freezing might not necessarily be good at thawing of eggs. The freezing and thawing of eggs are delicate processes and you’ll want to choose a clinic that can prove to you they do it regularly, and successfully. A clinic that does both successfully might not again be good at performing the IVF procedure so its best to check their track record.

2. Frequency:

You will want to go to a clinic that has a sufficient amount of practice. Usually, clinics that do more than 150 – 200 IVF cycles per year tend to have slightly higher rates of success. There are some perfectly good clinics that do less than the average number of annual cycles, but you should make doubly sure that they are exceptional for their size.

3. Doctor Personality

Fertility doctors, and clinics, tend to have their biases around how aggressively they want to treat patients. What your clinic’s stance is will likely influence how much time and money you invest in the process.

For instance, there are clinics that practice “mini-IVF”, where the doctor employs a “minimal stimulation” protocol that subjects the patient to less hormone therapy, but likely delivers fewer eggs per retrieval. Conversely, there are clinics that are very comfortable pushing the envelope, and plenty of clinics that fall somewhere in between.

This decision-making usually depends upon the doctor’s personality. Also, as a patient its important that the doctor is affable and your thought wave-lengths match as fertility treatments can be a cumbersome journey.

4. Doctor’s expertise in your ailment:

There are many underlying reasons why a woman, or couple, cannot have a child. Often the underlying causes are incredibly complex, and require a fair amount of specialization to address the issue. Thus, there are clinicians who are especially good at treating diminished ovarian reserve, PCOS, endometriosis, and the 10 to 20 other conditions that cause infertility. Patients who suffer from male factor infertility, should be seen at a clinic with a reproductive urologist on staff and so on.

5. Flexibility:

Usually, when an IVF cycle fails, the doctor will deploy a new approach based on previous learnings. That does not always happen, and it is common for patients to lose faith when they see that their doctor is not adapting treatment in a meaningful way with successive rounds.

6. Clinic Size and Affiliation

Fertility clinics vary dramatically, and two parameters of real differentiation are both the size of the clinic, and whether the clinic is run as a standalone business, or is part of a larger academic institution.

Larger versus Smaller Clinics

Larger clinics in Dubai typically have more resources for patients, and often have laboratories that do more cycles and thus have more data to use to fix their processes. On the other hand, a higher percentage of patients (69% vs 61%) at small clinics feel like they are treated with greater care and decency. Try finding a clinic where the trade-off is minimal.

7. The quality of the laboratory:

It is an open secret in Dubai that a superb laboratory can double the likelihood of success, and yet patients have almost no way to ascertain if their clinic’s laboratory is any good. But there are a few things to keep in mind. Find out the laboratory's fertilization rate (70% is respectable) and blastocsyst conversion rate (40 – 50% by Day 5) to get a sense for their ability to take eggs and sperm and deliver promising embryos.

8. The Billing Department

In case your fertility clinic doesn’t provide you a detailed estimate on the treatment procedure, it is likely that the billing department is not organized and your treatment cost may go haywire as time passes on. A disorganized billing department can cost you thousands of dirhams and weeks of aggravation — provided if you are able to discover billing discrepancies in the first place.

MMC IVF is a leading fertility clinic in Dubai helping couples across the world complete their family with world-class fertility specialists. We also offer medical concierge services so everything from your travel to stay to treatment is taken care of by us. All you have to do is make an appointment with us at +971 56 404 5330 or write to us at info@mmcivf.com. We will get back to you promptly. The best part is that you can stay at home and talk to our specialists online before you make the decision. In addition, you can request for a second opinion on the diagnosis and treatment you already are on. Reach out to MMC IVF and we will fix an appointment for it.