Cost-effectiveness of IVF infertility treatment in different legislative settings

Abstract

Summary Over three decades of experience enabled contemporary medicine to develop an advanced and highly efficient assisted reproductive technology (ART). Currently, we are witnesses to a nationwide debate in Poland concerning recommendation and law regulations for ART. This article expresses an opinion of medicine doctors who are specialists in the field of reproductive medicine in Poland. The authors expain why infertility is a wide and important socio-economic problem and why legislative proposals of the consevative members of the Polish Parliament expose patients to lower pregnancy rate, higher procedure cost and higher risk of complications. Authors also make analysis of different law regulations in Europe, concluding that the efficient ART model should limit the number of transferred embryos, allow cryopreservation of the embryos and impose the obligation to use the frozen embryos.