Vegas doctor's treatment for infertility controversial

Since 1978, women experiencing difficulty getting pregnant have turned to in vitro fertilization. Unfortunately, at $10,000 per procedure, many couples find the price tag prohibitive.

In vitro fertilization, in which a woman's eggs are removed and fertilized in a petri dish and then inserted into her uterus, may have to be performed several times until pregnancy occurs. Costs could easily skyrocket to anywhere from $30,000 to $70,000.

Dr. Geoffrey Sher, an internationally recognized infertility specialist, says he has come up with a procedure to increase a woman's odds of getting pregnant.

Sher, who recently moved to Las Vegas from Los Angeles where he was executive medical director of the California Pacific Fertility Medical Centers, has written several papers in the American Journal of Reproductive Immunology touting the combined use of the drugs heparin and aspirin and immunoglobulin G with heparin and aspirin to help some women get pregnant.

The problem with one in 10 women, Sher said, is they naturally abort the fertilized eggs because they have auto-antibodies in their systems. He found that by treating these women with small doses of heparin and baby aspirin, about 80 percent become pregnant the first time in vitro fertilization is done.

Sher said for women whom the heparin and aspirin treatment doesn't work, he introduces immunoglobulin G, which virtually eliminates the problem.

"Most women are finding that the seed (fertilized egg) is not bad. It's the source," Sher said. "I have helped more than 4,000 couples with this procedure."

Sher's latest study using the three drugs spanned four years and involved 687 women who were younger than 40 years old.

Even though Sher and several leading infertility specialists around the country think these drug combinations are promising, others believe the studies are flawed.

"There is not a lot of scientific data on this that says it works, except Geoffrey's data," said Dr. Mark Severino, an infertility specialist with the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. "This is a scary process. A woman died using heparin."

Sher said death was not related to the use of heparin and the woman was already between eight and nine weeks pregnant.

The Centers for Disease Control investigated the death, Sher said, and ruled that it could not relate her death directly to the use of heparin and aspirin.

However, Severino thinks that heparin could be dangerous when used with aspirin.

Dr. Bruce Shapiro, medical director of the Fertility Clinic of Las Vegas, agrees with Severino. He thinks Sher's procedures are controversial.

Both Severino and Shapiro point out that there have been no randomized clinical studies on heparin.

Dr. Joanne Kwak-Kim, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Chicago Medical School, says that's because at $10,000 for each in vitro fertilization, such a study would be too expensive. Also, she said, pharmaceutical companies and couples are hesitant to experiment with a new procedure when pregnancy is involved.

"In general, this is not a dangerous procedure," Kwak-Kim said. "Doctors have been using heparin for decades for cardiac and vascular problems. That woman was the only person who died."

Sher, however, realizes his findings are controversial. He says only a few large clinics, in such cities as Los Angeles and Chicago, are using the processes.

"It's a new arena," Sher said. "That's why it's so controversial."

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