Dr. Barmat is a board-certified Reproductive Endocrinologist and director of Sincera's Da Vinci Robotic Surgery Program. He recently sat down with us to share more about his thoughts on what makes Sincera different, how IVF has progress throughout the years and the best part of being a fertility specialist.
Why did you become a reproductive endocrinologist?
Some people have an event in their life that drives them towards medicine. But for me, I always wanted to be a physician. It's almost like in my DNA. From a young kid, I always knew I wanted to be a physician.
What’s the best part of your job?
Well, one of the most rewarding aspects of our field is when we make the call to a patient about their positive pregnancy test. When we make that phone call that someone's pregnant, the whole practice rallies around that. The nurses and the physicians, when we make the call, we're all extremely excited and happy for the patients.
How has IVF changed throughout the years?
A lot's changed in IVF since the first baby was born on July 25th, 1978. Back then, the In Vitro Fertilization process was much more complicated. We now have a variety of different medications that gives us better control of how we stimulate a patient's ovary, and the process is more carefully timed. Patients with severe male factor infertility can be overcome with the development of ICSI, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, and a number of other improvements of the lab, have caused pregnancy rates to rise dramatically. In the early days, rates were around 10% or so. Nowadays overall pregnancy rates are 50% or more. These success rates are really due to both our changes in our stimulation protocols, as well as many advances in the In Vitro Fertilization lab.
What makes Sincera different?
At Sincera Reproductive Medicine, we offer patients all the treatment options that are available to them, whether it be infertility or non-fertility patients. For those patients who are struggling with infertility, we review with them both the office-based therapies, that's taking medications and doing inseminations in the office, as well as In Vitro Fertilization.