Best Practice Recommendations for Infertility Management

Abstract

The objective of this document is to provide guidance to the infertility specialist, gynecologist, embryologist, and counselors on the management of sub-fertility and brief them with the recent advances in the field. These recommendations will aid the aforementioned healthcare professionals in everyday clinical decisions about appropriate and effective care of their patients with the best available evidence. Extensive deliberations, discussion, and brainstorming was done between different reproductive medicine (RM) specialists, to develop the recommendations. A systematic review of the literature published up to June 2019 was carried out using PubMed and Cochrane Collaboration Library. International guidelines, cohort studies, case series, observational studies, and randomized controlled trials currently available in the literature were reviewed. Indian data whatever available was also reviewed. Primary meetings were held with leading reproductive medicine specialists. Each topic was brainstormed on by a group of reproductive medicine experts, who then prepared the first draft of the recommendation. These recommendations then were reviewed by Dr. Jaideep Malhotra, Dr. Gouri Devi, and Dr. Madhuri Patil along with the chief co-ordinator of each consensus to finalize the final draft. From the literature and discussion of the available evidence, several topics were identified for which evidence is inconsistent, insufficient, or non-existing. For the benefit of couples undergoing several treatments, the working committee recommends that future research, where possible in well–designed RCTs, will help in establishing evidence for a particular practice. In the Indian context, one also needs to take into consideration facilities and options available, cost, lack of insurance coverage, experimental nature of some advanced techniques used.