Don't Be A Victim Of The Acupuncture-IVF Success Rate Scam

Acupuncture is a fantastic health care modality and there is no question that it can greatly improve your chances of an IVF pregnancy. However, there is a disturbing trend recently whereby some acupuncturists are publishing false or misleading data.

Here's the game:

Acupuncturist says their clinic has a 65% IVF pregnancy rate.

Are they lying? Probably not.

Are they unethically misleading you? Most likely.

Consider this:

We found that when we took a group of IVF patients and we administered one scoop of our special chocolate ice cream every day, we had a 65% pregnancy rate.

Am I lying? No.

Am I unethically misleading you? Yes!

How?

Many IVF pregnancies are actually the result, believe it or not, of IVF! So if my patients are doing IVF and they get pregnant, is that because of what I am doing, or what I am giving them? maybe yes, maybe no.

What if the IVF clinic I work with is getting a 70% pregnancy rate and my chocolate ice cream patients are getting a 65% pregnancy rate? Then the ice cream is associated with lower pregnancy rates. But I didn't give you that information and you simply assume that it is good because it sounds like a high number.

The other game is to compare pregnancy rates with the national average. So if the national average is 35% and my chocolate ice cream patients are getting 65% it sounds great! But the reality is that it is actually lowering pregnancy rates because the clinics I am working with are getting 70% without ice cream.

The bottom line is:

There are only two ways to know if your acupuncturist is improving pregnancy rates.

1. They publish their results as the product of a CONTROLLED TRIAL taking two groups of similar people getting similar IVF protocols where the only real difference is the acupuncture. Then, and ONLY THEN, we can see if that acupuncturist is improving pregnancy rates.

2. The acupuncturist applies protocols that have already been established in controlled trials to work AND they apply them exactly as they were applied in the studies.

Fortunately, there are many reliable, published clinical trials that demonstrate acupuncture significantly improves pregnancy rates (including one study we conducted).

An acupuncturist that has been properly trained (look for "FABORM" after their names.. stands for "Fellow of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine"), should know how to administer these protocols properly and indeed give you the benefits of properly performed acupuncture.

Conclusion

If an acupuncturist is claiming a particular IVF pregnancy rate (other than by referencing controlled, peer reviewed clinical trials) one should deeply question the accuracy and motivation for such statements.

Note that claims for pregnancies/success rates where acupuncture was the main modality (non-ART) may be ok, since the acupuncturists are not piggy backing their success rates on the IVF doctor. However, there is currently no credible body overseeing the accuracy or reliability of such claims.

What are ECCM's success rates with IVF?

Our practitioners have demonstrated improvements in ongoing pregnancies of 60% under controlled conditions (comparing people getting acupuncture to people not getting acupuncture). These results and the methodology we used were all peer reviewed and published in one of the top medical journals in the world in reproductive medicine. All of the claims we make with regard to IVF pregnancies are from similar peer reviewed published data.