New fertility clinic from Allegheny Health Network

Contemporary OB/GYN:

Hi, I'm Celeste Krewson with Contemporary OB/GYN and I'm here with Dr. Homa to discuss AHN’s fertility clinic. And would you like to introduce yourself?

Lori Homa, MD:

Sure. I'm Dr. Lori Homa. I'm the director for the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Allegheny Health Network. And it's nice to meet you.

Contemporary OB/GYN:

Nice to meet you. So, can you provide a brief overview of the clinic?

Homa:

Sure, we just opened our new center in North Fayette, which is also known as Robinson location. So, it's a brand new center. We just opened it this past month, and it's been wonderful here. But it's a new location separate from any other of the locations or the hospitals we have been at in the past. But everything now is located under 1 roof. And so, we do procedures here, we do the egg retrievals, hysteroscopy. But we also see patients at the clinic side and do blood draws, we do ultrasounds, and just see patients in the office as well, all under the same building now.

Contemporary OB/GYN:

That’s great. So why was the clinic founded, and what is it accomplished since its founding?

Homa:

Well, a long time ago it was founded initially to try to help people start having babies, and when IVF started to become first available, it was opened down at Allegheny General Hospital. And this was probably in the 80’s. And we were starting to provide IVF services at Allegheny General Hospital. And since then, we have come a really long way, and the science has come a really long way. So, from where it was started at Allegheny General, we continued at Allegheny General Hospital until this past move for our IVF. And when we moved into here about last month there was a big transition in terms of moving out of the hospital, because now you can park and walk right in, the facility is brand new, completely up to date. It has a lot of new embryology equipment, and we have something called an embryo scope that can watch the embryos over time and develop, and that's a whole new thing that we have. And so, it's been really exciting to be in this new space. But we were doing IVF for many years over at Allegheny General Hospital.

Contemporary OB/GYN:

And can you talk a bit more about the services you provide and how they might differ from other fertility clinics?

Homa:

Sure, so we provide the full spectrum of infertility services, so ovulation induction to get someone ovulating when they're when they're not, IUI, which is placing sperm into the uterus and try to help get the sperm closer to the eggs. We do IVF, which is taking the egg and the sperm both out of the body and combining them in the laboratory. We can biopsy those embryos for PGT, which is pre-implantation genetic testing, to be sure that the embryos are chromosomally normal. We freeze eggs, we freeze sperm, we can perform procedures for people who have a very low sperm count or a very low egg count. We can freeze eggs for people who are about to undergo chemotherapy as a fertility preservation. We see a lot of different reasons for needing to undergo these kind of IVF treatments. But also, we do surgical procedures as well. So, if someone was born with what we call Mullerian anomaly or developmental difference in their reproductive track, then we can do sometimes things that would correct that. If you have everyone's born with actually 2 horns of the uterus that come together and form into 1 and along that pathway, it can stop at any point. So, there are other abnormalities as well that can be had and corrected within the uterus or the vagina or cervix. And those are things that we do here, and I can surgically correct those as well. I also do surgeries for women who have had something called Asherman syndrome of scar tissue within the uterus that may be preventing them from getting pregnant, fibroids, endometriosis, so a bunch of different diagnoses. On the clinic side, we do other hormonal therapies. So transgender care, we also do some pediatric and adolescent gynecology. So, as someone who is not developing into puberty, we can do that over in terms of hormonal support. So, we have a full range of services, and I'm sure I'm leaving out something. But there's a lot that we can do here, both on the clinic side and over on our new surgical center side. And keep it all here. And so, I perform that full spectrum of services.

Contemporary OB/GYN:

And those are all really interesting. We're just about ready to wrap up. But is there anything you want to add first?

Homa:

Sure, I would just say if you're considering infertility care, or hormonal replacements, or anything, just reach out early, don't wait. We are here, and we're open to everyone. And it has been a wonderful I think patient experience as well in our in our new center. So, we're happy to help anybody and reach out early and don't wait because the longer you wait either the more suffering you may have, or else the earlier we do things like egg freezing, the better the quality might be. So, reach out early, and we're here and we're happy to help.

Contemporary OB/GYN:

Well, thank you for joining me today.

Homa:

Thank you so much.