Lower cost. Better results. Financing available. No wait for consultation. World famous IVF doctor. Patients come from all over the world. Call us at (314) 576-1400

Infertile patients cannot afford to wait for treatment while their eggs get older.

Dr. Sherman Silber, Infertility Center of St. Louis, is offering video consultations for patients who need to plan now for their treatment while stay-at-home orders are in place. He is talking to and evaluating patients in their home to comply with social distancing measures.

Dr. Silber is discovering that patients actually prefer this method of telemedicine consultation over the conventional office visit. Patients have conveyed that “it is so much more convenient and less stressful” to have a telemedicine personal consultation than to take a day off from work to travel to the doctor’s office and sit with other nervous patients in the waiting room.

The COVID-19 pandemic is thus changing much of the way we will do things in the future, and for the better. “Our patients are surprisingly much happier with this approach. Of course, at some point we need to perform hands on treatment. But with this new manner of seeing patients, we can come to the right diagnosis and treatment plan for most patients more efficiently, quickly, and painlessly, with no loss of personal one-on-one communication.” This is a very welcome new era of telemedicine that has been forced on us by the current difficult times.

Menu
Phone +1 (314) 576-1400
The Infertility Center of St. Louis
The Infertility Center of St. Louis
About Dr. Silber
Patient Comments
X

No Overall Increase in Cancer Risk Following IVF Treatment, Study Finds

bionewslogo

by Rosemary Paxman

BioNews.org.uk, December 6, 2010

A new study has shown that IVF may not be linked to an increased risk of certain cancers among female patients. A team of Swedish researchers concluded that, although cancer or cancer treatment may increase the need for IVF, the risks of cancer post-IVF treatment were low.

The study compared cancer rates in 24,000 women in Sweden who gave birth post-IVF between 1982 and 2006 with rates in 1.4 million women in the general Swedish population (who also gave birth in the same period). The researchers found that the overall risk of a woman developing cancer after IVF was roughly 25 percent lower than in women who had not undergone the procedure.

‘The risk for two common cancers, breast and cervical, was significantly lower than expected’, said study leader Dr Bengt Kallen of the University of Lund, Sweden. Dr Kallen explained this could be due to the better state of health necessary in women to be selected for IVF treatment. Furthermore, women needing IVF may undergo more mammography and cervical smears, aiding early detection and treatment of precancerous conditions.

Dr Sherman Silber, director of the Infertility Center of St. Louis at St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, and author of the best selling book, “How to Get Pregnant” published by Little Brown, comments that “over 10 million women have undergone IVF with no increase risk of cancer despite hormonal stimulation.” In fact, Dr Silber points out that “not having children creates a greater risk of cancer than is seen in a population of women who have had children. This massive study from Sweden successfully debunks another baseless fear myth about IVF (such as cancer risk) and risks to IVF offspring (who are completely normal and in fact if anything are much more competent on average than the general population).”

‘A couple who needs IVF does not have to be afraid that the hormone treatment used – at least those used in Sweden – will carry a risk for the woman to develop cancer’, said Dr Kallen speaking to Reuters Health. Previous studies have suggested some hormone drugs used in IVF may be linked to cancer but these have not been numerous and have mostly been small scale, said the authors of the new study.

The findings were based on data obtained from IVF clinics in Sweden and the Swedish Cancer Registry. They were published in the journal Human Reproduction.

See also: