Egg Preservation and the Changing Medical Landscape

Sperm preservation, primarily in the form of sperm donation, has moved into the American mainstream in recent years. Yet its counterpart, egg preservation, has generally remained off the radar, despite the fact that the first pregnancy as a result of cryopreserved eggs dates back to 1986 (Chen, 1986). The procedure is primarily used as a starting point for future in vitro fertilization, and has played a role in allowing women to gain more control over their reproductive futures. However, cryopreservation of eggs is expensive, impeding widespread development and use. Even today, over 30 years after the inception, procedures cost upwards of 15,000 (Hamblin, 2016). Fortunately, a new fertility clinic, through lower costs and improved safety, might be reshaping the field.

The clinic, called Extend Fertility, was founded by a group of entrepreneurs and physicians with efficiency in mind. Utilizing a process dubbed “super-specialization,” the scientists can focus solely on egg cryopreservation, and avoid much of the overhead cost that would be associated with a more general fertility clinic (Hamblin, 2016). This economic efficiency has led to a bold business model: if a woman is young and in good health, she pays a flat sum (a little under $5000) and the clinic promises at least a dozen eggs (Hamblin, 2016). That is, even if the procedure does not work the first time, it will be repeated until it is successful for no additional charge.

However, claims of lower costs have been somewhat unfounded.  In reality, the egg retrieval process is only a piece of the cost. The hormone therapy and longer term storage, which are required for the success of the procedure and for the practical use of the eggs in the future, drive up the actual price of the process to somewhere near the current market price (Hamblin, 2016). Regardless, the group has stated that its method will eventually decrease costs and improve outcomes.

The establishment of such a clinic, beyond its specific purpose and outcomes data, presents a set of interesting and important questions for the medical community. Primarily, when steep prices are involved, the medical field must ask itself whether or not economic inaccessibility may lead to differential health outcomes. Specifically, it has been well documented that younger women, and younger eggs, have better IVF success rates (Wang, 2011). If this model is successful in lowering prices, it could help equalize IVF opportunity. Additionally, this hyper-specialized form of health care, where providers become incredibly well-versed in a single procedure or small subset of procedures, has been seen in other branches of the healthcare field, especially with specific orthopedic surgeries, and suggests a direction the field field as a whole might be moving in (Hamblin, 2016). There are, of course, field specific implications, including a need for additional, rigorous research about the effects of egg cryopreservation, donor age, and IVF success, but only time will tell what this small clinic means for the field as a whole.

Resources:

Chen, C. (1986, April 19). Pregnancy After Human Oocyte Cryopreservation. The Lancet, 327(8486), 884-886. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(86)90989-x

Hamblin, J. (2016, September 15). One Clinic Is Promising to Cut the Cost of Egg Freezing in Half. Retrieved September 16, 2016, from http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/09/how-one-clinic-is-cutting-the-cost-of-egg-freezing-in-half/500144/
Wang, Y. A., Farquhar, C., & Sullivan, E. A. (2011). Donor age is a major determinant of success of oocyte donation/recipient programme.Human Reproduction, 27(1), 118-125. doi:10.1093/humrep/der359

Racial Disparities in Opioid…Prescription?

An article published this past week through the Public Library of Science (PLOS ONE) provided an in-depth look at opioid prescription trends in emergency departments (Singhal, 2016). It has been well documented that minorities are less likely to be prescribed opioids by emergency rooms, with a major 2008 article by Pletcher et al providing some significant data on the subject (Pletcher, 2008). In an attempt to reassess the current literature and view the data through a new lens, Singhal and colleagues specifically looked at whether the opioids were administered in the emergency room or prescribed at discharge (Singhal, 2016). The distinction is a meaningful one, providing insight into provider-patient trust while potentially highlighting the presence of a systemic treatment bias against racial minorities.

Through the analysis of the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) data collected from 2007-2012, the group found significant racial disparities in both administration and prescription of opioid medication for certain “non-definitive conditions,” including back pain and abdominal pain (Singhal, 2016). Odds ratios, which are statistical measures of an association between an exposure and an outcome, were computed. In this case, the exposure was race, the outcome opioid prescription. It was found that non-Hispanic blacks had 0.67 and 0.58 times the odds of receiving opioids at discharge and in the emergency department, respectively (Singhal, 2016). Both odds ratios were statistically significant, with P values less than 0.05. These ratios, along with the large sample sizes ranging from 3000-10,000 for the significant ailments, speak to the strength of the analysis.

These findings come on the tail of a recent social psychology report out of the University of Virginia by Hoffman et al. which exposed inherent bias against black patients by both laypeople and medical students (Hoffman, 2016). In the later experiment, 222 medical students were presented with patient scenarios and asked about their perception of patient pain, revealing that false beliefs about biological disparity between races led to a “racial bias in pain perception” (Hoffman, 2016). These two articles together highlight the need for further study of, and a focus on counteracting these pervasive biases. However, Singhal’s discussion also highlighted the complexity of assessing doctor-patient interaction and accurately representing the presence of minority bias via discrete data points.

One confounding variable that complicates this assessment is socioeconomic status. A recent New York Times article, which set out to review the Singhal article, points out that in many cases, racial disparity and low socioeconomic status are intertwined, complicating patient care, and the data corresponding to that care (Goodnough, 2016). Despite this confounder, though, the researchers interviewed for the article, including Raymond Tait, a pain researcher in St. Louis, are certain that race plays a role that should not be ignored.

Given this data, it appears as though further inquiry will be necessary to flesh out the problem more fully before meaningful interventions can be executed. The pain management field must self-assess while attempting to create metrics to more specifically explain clinical decision making. One of the major pitfalls of the Singhal paper was the acknowledgement that, even if there is bias, every patient presents differently, complicating the statistical analysis. Additionally, proper control of socioeconomic factors in analyzing racial disparity data should enhance the current picture of minority bias, and potentially point to opinions for intervention.

References: 

Goodnough, A. (2016, Aug). Finding Good Pain Treatment is Hard. If You’re Not White, It’s Even Harder. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/how-race-plays-a-role-in-patients-pain-treatment.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fhealth&action=click&contentCollection=health&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=1

Hoffman, KM, Trawalter, S, Axt, JR, and Oliver, MN (2016). Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. PNAS 2016 113 (16) 4296-4301. Retrived from http://www.pnas.org/content/113/16/4296.abstract

Pletcher MJ, Kertesz SG, Kohn MA, Gonzales R (2008).Trends in opioid prescribing by race/ethnicity for patients seeking care in US emergency departments. JAMA. 2008;299:70–78. Retrived from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18167408

Singhal A, Tien Y-Y, Hsia RY (2016). Racial-Ethnic Disparities in Opioid Prescriptions at Emergency Department Visits for Conditions Commonly Associated with Prescription Drug Abuse. PLoS ONE 11(8). Retrived from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0159224