Are assisted reproductive technology treatments expensive?

Are assisted reproductive technology treatments expensive?

Richard Paulson (Chief, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, USC) gives expert video advice on: How often do assisted reproductive technology treatments produce multiple children?; Are assisted reproductive technology treatments expensive? and more...

Assisted reproductive technology in general is very labour intensive, both for the patient as well as of course the fertility clinic. The patient has to have multiple office visits, take multiple injections, and the clinic has to do ultrasounds, exams, blood tests, and then of course after the eggs are retrieved not only the egged or tubal process itself, but then all the work in the laboratory that involves finding the eggs, fertilising them, watching the embryos, and transferring them from dish to dish. So, quite a lot of work goes into this process and as a consequence IVF is quite expensive relatively speaking. A ball park figure in the United States is about $10,000 for one cycle. Some of that of course is the cost of the medication, but most of it is the cost to the clinic and to all the people that are doing the work. For comparison a minor surgical procedure in an outpatient surgery centre; such as a tubal ligation or a laparoscopy or an arthroscopy; all those procedures cost about $10,000 it's a ball park figure in that same kind of range. Medical intervention in general is quite expensive in the United States. There are very high standards for all the material that have to be used. Every piece of equipment has to be certified for human use and so on. So, the costs are quite high all the way along the way. From the perspective of a minor surgical procedure IVF is not that expensive, but compared with just going to the doctor for an office visit, of course it's quit expensive.