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Restorative Reproductive Medicine · NaProTechnology

Chapter 51: Effectiveness of NaProTECHNOLOGY

Hilgers TW

The Medical and Surgical Practice of NaProTECHNOLOGY, 677-696, 2004

RRM Academy Synopsis

NaProTECHNOLOGY per-woman pregnancy tops IVF series in five categories

In five categories, the author reports higher per-woman pregnancy rates with NaProTECHNOLOGY than IVF series. This 2004 textbook chapter covers 1,045 patients treated for infertility at one institute. The author says per-cycle IVF rates do not account for women who drop out.

Key Findings

  • The chapter names four ways to count success. Survival curves probably overestimate it. Per-woman rates tend to underestimate it, because women lost to follow-up count as not pregnant.
  • The 1,045 patients had endometriosis (643 of them), blocked tubes, polycystic ovarian disease, pelvic adhesions, no ovulation, no sperm in the semen, or unknown causes.
  • In five categories, the author reports per-woman pregnancy and family-building rates statistically higher with NaProTECHNOLOGY than in the IVF series cited. Pregnancies per month of exposure were higher in two IVF series.
  • The author ties the gap to dropout: by the third IVF cycle, nearly 90 percent on average of women not yet pregnant had stopped, across three published series.
  • Within the series, pregnancy rates were lower with more advanced endometriosis, with dry mucus cycles among women with endometriosis, and at age 38 and over.

RRM Context

NaProTECHNOLOGY, developed by Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, is one named method within restorative reproductive medicine (RRM). The chapter is that method's own outcome account. RRM's shared principle is finding the underlying cause before treating, which suits counting results per couple over years of care. IVF bypasses the reproductive system without establishing why conception fails, and its registries report per cycle. The two reporting styles use different denominators.

Our editorial summary of this paper, not the article's abstract.

Abstract

This chapter reviews ways of expressing infertility treatment success, including Kaplan-Meier survival curves, per-woman pregnancy rates, fecundability rates and the cycle-by-cycle rates used for ART, and discusses the limits of each. Hilgers then presents data on 1,045 patients treated for infertility with NaProTECHNOLOGY, reporting that over 60 percent became pregnant by 24 months and nearly 70 percent by 36 months, with couples whose husbands were azoospermic excluded. Subgroup analyses cover endometriosis by stage, polycystic ovarian disease, tubal occlusion, oligospermia, anovulation, mucus cycle type, ovulation defects, luteal phase deficiency and age, and report significantly lower cumulative pregnancy rates in women with dry cycles. Comparing these results with published IVF data, the chapter states that its analysis appears to show NaProTECHNOLOGY exceeding the artificial reproductive technologies when evaluated by survival curve analysis and per-woman pregnancy rates, and it reports a multiple pregnancy rate of 3.2 percent.

Topics

By this author

Related research

Restorative Reproductive Medicine › NaProTechnology › Cumulative Pregnancy Rates
Thomas W Hilgers
Tom Hilgers, T Hilgers
Hilgers et al. 2004, Hilgers 2004

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