Dr. Widra or Dr. Levy? SG Rockville or DC?

[Anonymous]

Wider is extremely arrogant and does not listen. I had my first child with him, and I went back to him again. Big mistake. I had asked him about doing batch processing of eggs and freezing due to my age because I had read women my age have have a higher success rate using that protocol. He did not think it was necessary. Fast forward one year later after 1 miscarriage and 4 cycles. Now he thinks my egg quality is too far gone. I have had to fight him for every change in my protocol. And every time I did we got better results. No idea why anyone thinks the man is competent. I agree that there must be some shady grove marketing group on here. Also my acupuncturist had heard the same thing about Widra.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do Widra's patients have such opposing views. I'm going to D.C. and I'm going to meet with Osborne becuase I would like a female dr, but I hear I will mustsee all the REs at D.c.

Osborne is great. I went to her for the same reason. However, because you go when you need to go for cycling, most of your monitoring appointments will be with any doctor and nurse who is available at that time, no matter which doctor/site you go to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love Widra and the entire DC staff . His bedside manner is good, he is very funny! Makes the process seamless, efficient, smart, fun.

Makes the process smart and fun? Efficient? Are you a first time IVF patient? Which other doctors do you have to compare it to? This posting sounds like it was written by Widra staff.

I met the guy once, I can see how people take him as arrogant based on some questions I asked. I don't mind no-nonsense but I don't like arrogant so I'm hesitating. My friends had twins after the second IVF try so I went to see him. I don't know whether to proceed with him or not.

[Anonymous]

Just because Widra gets some positive reviews doesn't mean it's a SG staff person posting it. And I don't think the accusatory tone of some posters on here about that is justified. I know he is well respected in the industry. I'm sure some people have a great experiences with him.

That said, I did three cycles with him and they were the worst of the bunch I did. I do find him arrogant and it seems as if he doesn't like questions of any sort or he gets defensive - like you're questioning his authority/knowledge. I'm sure his prorocols work fine for easy cases but that wasn't me. I ended up leaving him for that reason and had luck elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

I had lots of ups and downs with SGF - but ultimately had healthy twins. I also found Dr. Widra very 'straightforward' and focused on the science and seemed to have a strong professional guard up after years of working with families who are struggling with painful and difficult fertility situations and choices (or lack of choices) that can come off as cold and uncaring, but that's the reality of their business. I don't think he and some of the others are particularly good at names or remembering cases/past patients - but they are seeing tons of patients that cycle through (not to excuse but also think it's a combo of personality & professional detachment). If you have any weekend monitoring, it's going to be done at Rockville anyway, and the retrievals and transfers are at Rockville - so you'll be interacting with Rockville one way or another. Your main doctor works on your 'diagnosis' and protocol and decisions about meds/transfers/etc - but you will basically have a range of the doctors who do the monitoring & whoever is scheduled that day doing your retrieval and transfer. I found both the Rockville and DC offices as a bit factory like for monitoring but I guess I don't expect much else at doctor's appointments. I had previously gone to GWU's fertility center & also found ups & downs there.

[Anonymous]

Don't go near Dr. Levy. I asked him if his stats were statistically significant and he looked at me in shock and said "they are what they are." He was telling me stats for a eSet vs. transferring two, and honestly, without knowing if they are significant (chi-squares) or if they are just descriptives make a difference in how you choose. (I am a PhD student btw, I know my stats!) The point is, he is the head of their program and should understand the stats he is spouting at people. This man never listened to me and my nurses sucked. I had two failed treatments--never made it to transfer and a failed cycle and then I cancelled the last cycle (3rd) because my thyroid went crazy. The last time I saw him before I cancelled my cycle, he could not even remember that I had had previously transferred; he had my chart in front of him and didn't even bother to read it. He was like a broken record: "you are a healthy 34 year old, you are fine." The point is, I interviewed a bunch of REs, left SG with took my embryos with me! A few months later, I am now pregnant on my first cycle at another clinic under the care of an RE who listens to me. Do your research, interview REs! I wanted more personal service and I wanted people at the clinic who knew me. I feel like I have a doctor now and not a salesperson!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wider is extremely arrogant and does not listen. I had my first child with him, and I went back to him again. Big mistake. I had asked him about doing batch processing of eggs and freezing due to my age because I had read women my average more success that way. He did not think it was necessary. Fast forward one year later after 1 miscarriage and 4 cycle. Now he thinks my egg quality is too far gone. I have had to fight him for every change in my protocol. And every time I did we got better results. No idea why anyone thinks the man is competent. I agree that there must be some shady grove marketing group on here. Also my acupuncturist had heard the same thing about Widra.

Can you say a bit more about better results from changes in protocol? You had more eggs retrieved or got BFPs? what changes did you manage to get done?
BTW, I don't know about listening to acupuncturists, I find them to be like hairdressers sometimes - chatty and agreeing with any stuff you say.

[Anonymous]

I find Dr widra so hot for some reason. I'm not kidding.

[Anonymous]

Dr. Widra is a very good technician: so if you need a complicated procedure done - like a surgery for Asherman's - he's your guy. He is SG's medical director and accordingly is very wedded to SG's limited protocols. He does not have a lot of time or interest to remember or think about what might be going on with an individual patient beyond these baselines. SG is like Kaiser, or McDonalds. It serves a lot of people affordably and reasonably well with little to no variations. This works well for many people who fall within the average bands. The problem is that you never know if you will be one of those average people, and know that if you are not, they will basically treat your failure as an annoyance rather than a problem to be examined and solved. So you have to decide what type of place you want.

If you want someone who does an extremely thorough work-up, gets higher success rates, and can talk intelligently about the latest studies, go out of town to CCRM. If you want more personalization, go to a smaller practice. If you suspect that you may have immune issues, go elsewhere. If you want to go the factory -- which admittedly works for many people at a good price -- go to SG, but accept that is what you will get there.

[Anonymous]

We are a less typical case and I could tell Widra had a higher interest from that perspective. He's business/science, but I appreciate that. It gives me an entree if they f-up to say, 'You are supposed to be better at this than you have been'. I haven't had anything catastrophic, but some missteps with their office staff over the years. I think if I were at a more touchy/feely practice that didn't place a premium on the efficiency, then I'd feel differently about criticizing their business practices.

[Anonymous]

We are patients of Dr. Widra and have been on and off for a few years now. When we first started working with Shady Grove in 2011 or so, my wife and I were not huge fans. Like others have mentioned, we found him to be super arrogant, and his nurse was awful and unsympathetic, which makes a HUGE difference. At the time we were IUI patients. A wonderful opportunity opened up for us in 2012 to do IVF at an out of state clinic, so we went that route and conceived our first child. Flash forward to 2014... we went back to Shady Grove and back to Widra, this time for Shared Risk IVF. What a difference. He has been really great to work with so far, and the nurse who's assigned to him is just wonderful. Not sure whether it's because we are IVF patients this time or what, but the experience has been a complete 180 from 2011.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dr. Widra is a very good technician: so if you need a complicated procedure done - like a surgery for Asherman's - he's your guy. He is SG's medical director and accordingly is very wedded to SG's limited protocols. He does not have a lot of time or interest to remember or think about what might be going on with an individual patient beyond these baselines. SG is like Kaiser, or McDonalds. It serves a lot of people affordably and reasonably well with little to no variations. This works well for many people who fall within the average bands. The problem is that you never know if you will be one of those average people, and know that if you are not, they will basically treat your failure as an annoyance rather than a problem to be examined and solved. So you have to decide what type of place you want.

If you want someone who does an extremely thorough work-up, gets higher success rates, and can talk intelligently about the latest studies, go out of town to CCRM. If you want more personalization, go to a smaller practice. If you suspect that you may have immune issues, go elsewhere. If you want to go the factory -- which admittedly works for many people at a good price -- go to SG, but accept that is what you will get there.

So I looked at CCRM and SG success rates side to side. The reliability range that CCRM reports is very large and odd, also, after 40 you have practically no chance there. Another interesting thing is to compare the patient issues (% table on top). Over a third of patients that CCRM takes have male issues, so ICSI and boom, nice success rate.

[Anonymous]

PP - Are you comparing fresh with fresh? Look at CCRM's explanation of its success rates, and it explains that it uses primarily frozen CCS these days -- leading to higher success rates. http://www.colocrm.com/AboutCCRM/SuccessRates/UnderstandingIVFSuccessRates.aspx Very few patients are doing fresh transfers there. If you look at frozen, either OE or DE, their rates are great -- substantially better than SG especially for older women with OE.

[Anonymous]

Following up on the last post, SG does not do enough frozen transfers with CCS/PGS/CGH normals to have statistics on how long they take to work: e.g., how many patients get pregnant in 1 cycle, vs. 2, vs. 3, vs. 4. At least this is what they told me when I asked.

[Anonymous]

And one last follow up. A lot of people with egg or other issues also have male issues. I am not sure how SG counts this. If only ICSI were the magic bullet.